Red Destiny
by PSVT
Summary: Life. Love. Family. On one side of Italy's long-standing clandestine war stands a government-hired hacker. On the other, a millionaire separatist financier. Both men hold and cherish these ideals, and will do everything in their power to uphold them. Only fate will decide if the rewards are worthy of their immense cost.
1. Prologue: An Unexpected Meeting

**Prologue | An Unexpected Meeting**

—| **1** |2|—

Alessio Gaspari truly detested Rome.

As usual, stone walls seemed to tower over him, surround him, and swallow him whole as he walked along the narrow passageway. However, even as those very walls amplified the sputtering exhausts and dull collisions of rubber against cobblestone, he came to realize his surroundings could have been far, far worse. An abundance of colors—canary yellow next to pink, beige and coral ahead of him—saved his eyes from what otherwise might have been a dreary gray and brown morass as in other parts of the city. Nature provided its own contribution in the form of brilliant green, both in the smattering of London plane trees that lined the streets further ahead and in the denser collection of those and other foliage within the park behind him.

It was a damned shame that this ostensible oasis was stuck within the veritable hell of Rome.

He trudged onward, steadfast in his determination despite the weight tugging at and digging into his right shoulder. A sharp yank of the thick canvas strap brought him a brief respite. Not that he had to worry about his discomfort for much longer, for he was barely minutes away from his destination. The wide swath of branches and overhanging leaves growing ever larger in his vision would protect him from the beating he endured from the late morning sun.

Then again, so would not being outside in the first place.

The intersection of the cobble road and tree-lined boulevard held many shops and points of interest to locals and tourists alike. Of particular interest to him was a pizzeria to his right, tucked into the corner of an apartment building. Its white stone exterior buttressed the weathered red brick façade of the upper stories. A row of tables, a few empty but most occupied by blithely unaware locals, squeezed an already narrow walkway even tighter. He shuffled to his left to avoid hitting a patron with his bag, only to nearly shove another pedestrian into the row of motorbikes parked in front of the restaurant.

" _Dammit_ ," he thought, letting his shoulder bag fall into his right hand so he could massage the sore muscle with his left. " _What the hell was I thinking in waiting so long to get some lunch? Could've gone earlier and beat this mad rush—or somewhere else for that matter."_

It was a moot point now. As he breached the threshold he was greeted with the raucous din of a nearly packed establishment. He momentarily considered turning around and retracing his steps to a pizzeria two blocks away. However, the sweet aroma wafting throughout the building pulled him back in.

" _Might as well wait here. It's not like the other place is any less packed."_

Nevertheless, seating was remarkably quick. Luck placed him inside, well away from the overbearing sunlight from which the awning provided little protection. The cost of that good fortune was that he was likely going to wait several minutes before his order arrived. He reached down into the brown shoulder bag that occupied the adjacent chair and pulled out a laptop computer.

" _Well, I guess I could get a little bit of work done, if only to pass the time."_

His annoyed huff as he slouched into the cushion easily overpowered the laptop fan's mechanical whirring. A few seconds later the whirring subsided and the screen flashed to display a pale blue background. On it, a white text box beckoned him to supply a user name and password.

" _Thank goodness for SSDs, else the pizza'd get here before this goddamned thing's done booting. Heh. Anyway, I'd better take a quick peek around this place for any threats before getting to work here."_

A healthy dose of paranoia was necessary given Alessio's prior career choices—doubly the case for his present course. The data his laptop carried merely added to his concern. He was not silly enough to actually store working documents directly on the machine, but that was irrelevant. It provided a conduit to the data, and if the machine fell into the wrong hands then he risked far more than a dismissal from his employers. A serious enough mistake meant all his technical precautions could be damned. No amount of encryption could save him then.

" _Hmm… there's a brunette in the corner. Eh, can't rule her out completely, but she's probably okay. Doesn't really fit the pattern."_ He slid his gaze rightward, exhaling a worried sigh as he soon found another source of worry. _"No… no… not quite… Oh, that blonde, though. She fits the profile alright. Not perfectly, but close enough for trouble. I'll definitely want to keep an eye on her."_

He returned at least a part of his attention to the laptop, his fingers flying across the keys with practiced precision. A darker gray background greeted him barely a second after he finished. Unlike the typical computer user whose desktop was littered with icons for various files, folders, and programs, his was rather sparse. Among those few was a program that enabled a secure connection from his laptop to another computer containing all the files he needed. Such technology made irrelevant any need to know the true location of the other machine. The program prompted him to type in yet another password. It wasn't strictly necessary for setting up the encrypted connection, but a person in his shoes could never be too careful. He repositioned his hands upon the keyboard.

At that moment he encountered a major problem.

It was a problem that peered at him with inquisitive pale blue eyes. He found a certain coldness in that stare, and it caused him to flinch. That, or the fact she had seemingly come from nowhere. Despite her long blond hair, she certainly wasn't the blonde he had spotted earlier. That girl remained seated three tables ahead, wrangling some rogue cheese dangling from her slice of sausage pizza. He didn't quite fully know which it was that had set him off. As he swiveled in his seat to face this potential threat, he really didn't care too much about finding out.

"W-What do you want?" His eyes narrowed as irritation swept away the initial shock. An open hand slapped the table as his other grabbed the back of his bench seat to steady his twisted frame. "Don't you know it's rude to just stare at people like that?"

"I, um…"

In that instant, as he saw the girl lower her gaze and unsteadily loop her finger through a few strands of hair, he almost regretted his angry outburst. That feeling subsided when he heard a steadier voice from the girl once she found the determination to speak.

"I was just interested, that's all. I-In your computer, that is."

"Interested, huh? I sure as hell see nothing special about it, unless you're looking to steal it or something like that."

"No, I—"

She stopped talking the instant a pair of hands fell upon her shoulders, and when Alessio looked up at the man connected to those hands he could see why. He recoiled from the pair with a grimace twisting his face, despite being met in turn by such a nervous, if otherwise genial, smile.

"I'm sorry. You'll have to excuse my daughter here. It seems she takes after me in being quite the computer geek."

If Alessio heard the man's explanation or his self-deprecating chuckle that ensued, he didn't make it known. Instead, a certain thought occupied his mind. _"Where the hell did… oh, I see now. He was sitting right behind me. But I damned sure didn't see that girl with him before."_

The other man continued, apparently undaunted by the momentary silence. "You see, she gets a bit overly excited sometimes at seeing brand new, shiny toys like your laptop. I can't really say that I blame her."

"Well, my laptop isn't a toy for her to play with." He huffed, and turned to the man a rather annoyed look. "I'm trying to get at least a small amount of work done here before my food arrives, and this girl of yours is getting in my way."

"Understood." He punctuated the words with a nod. "I'll make sure she stays out of your way from now on."

Before the man could usher his daughter away from the table of an agitated Alessio, the trio was joined by a fourth. He was the waiter, and he carried a glass of water destined for that table, along with assorted drinks for other patrons. That man approached the father and daughter pair from behind, which would have been absolutely no problem, had the girl paid any attention to her surroundings. With her gaze directed steadfastly at the ground, probably due to her mixed feelings of disappointment and embarrassment, she slammed right into the man. The glass of water swerved and teetered on the edge of imbalance for a disturbingly long second before finally succumbing to gravity. Alessio felt his heart stop as he tracked the trail of liquid fall from the tray and slam into the table's polished wooden surface. His eyes then followed the water as it flowed over the edge.

"Oh shit!"

Whether that sentiment stayed within his thoughts or fled into reality did not matter to him as he felt more cold liquid against his skin. It felt really sticky and very much unlike water. He was split between investigating this new problem and containing the existing one. It caused him to freeze in place momentarily, until he remembered that his bag sitting alongside him was getting wet. Not that it was a huge problem in its own right, until he realized there was something even more valuable than that laptop sitting right there in that bag, and that he had left the bag wide open.

"Ah! My apologies, sir!" The waiter, with great haste, set the tray down on a nearby table before any more of the spilled drinks overflowed its raised edges. "Oh, let me grab some towels for you really quickly." Then he noticed the water path migrating toward the laptop computer. "Oh, your laptop!"

"Don't worry, I got it."

Alessio heard the man say those words, but he didn't pay any real attention to what he perceived as a blob stalking the edge of his peripheral vision. After all, he had greater concerns than that machine. It wasn't as if they could get away with stealing it. He was right there, after all. Even if they did, it would've been rather useless without the item he was rushing to save.

That item was his cell phone.

Normally, he wouldn't care. Most people wouldn't. However, that phone was more than a mere mode of communication. For one, it was specially modified. For two, it provided the second factor of authentication for him to actually log into the remote server and access the files he needed. Without his phone, he might as well just return to his office. That alone was no major problem, except for the small fact that his office was a few hundred kilometers away. His early return would not have pleased his bosses in the slightest. He felt his fingers grasp the phone's damp aluminum exterior for an instant before the device slipped from his hand and back into the pool of water at the bottom of the bag.

"Argh!"

One more attempt was all he needed to finally extract the phone from his bag. A quick press of the power button would tell him whether his trip to Rome was all for naught. Naturally, his first priority was to make sure it was dry beforehand, lest he accidentally consign the phone to such an inevitable demise. He looked up just in time to see the waiter return to the table with a handful of towels. The fact that the man and that blonde were still hovering around concerned him slightly, but not nearly as much as the potential loss of his phone.

"Here you go, sir."

He swiped one of the thick cotton towels from the waiter's outstretched hand and, with great haste, set about dabbing at the phone. When he was certain it was dry enough he pressed the power button and stared, waiting—nay, praying—for the screen to illuminate.

Let there be light.

Pent-up stress and frustration fled from him in the loud sigh he exhaled, placing the phone in right pocket of his trousers. It felt awkward since his other phone, the one he used for more mundane purposes, occupied his left pocket. Either way, it was safer that way, at least until he could remove the remaining water from the bag. But that would have to wait for after lunch.

"Excuse me, sir."

Alessio looked up to see that man yet again. The source of his current troubles, though his time he saw from the man's face a more repentant expression. Now that the crisis had been settled, he could actually examine the man more thoroughly. First off, Alessio noticed that he and the man standing at the end of the table shared the same average build. He couldn't quite explain why, but that fact alone calmed him. Maybe it was that he expected his enemies to be stockier, more muscular. Ex-military or police types. They generally were, as recent bitter experience had so plainly demonstrated to him. This man, however, clearly lacked that same physical presence. So did he, by that same logic, but he ignored that point. Looking upward, Alessio found that they shared the same brown colored hair, though his was a few shades darker and several centimeters longer than the close trimmed look opposite him. It reminded him, vaguely, that a well-needed haircut loomed in his future, should he ever gain the motivation to find a barber. That was for later, however. The present moment demanded that he figure out what that unknown man had to say.

"What?" Paying attention didn't mean he had to be particularly nice about it.

"My daughter here has something she wants to say to you." Alessio saw the man give the girl standing before him a gentle nudge in the back. "Isn't that right, Gabriella?"

The girl lowered her head, apparently in shame, before speaking in a solemn whisper. "I'm sorry for nearly breaking your computer."

"And?"

"And I'm also sorry for ruining your shirt as well." The suddenness as she snapped a wide-eyed gaze upward to meet her father's jostled several long strands of hair, causing some to fall haphazardly across her face. "But, how was I supposed—"

"That's enough."

So _that_ explained the continued feeling of dampness on his arm. A very alarmed Alessio had grabbed one of the towels the waiter had left him upon hearing the girl's second apology. However, the stern voice that followed from her father made even him stop in his tracks. His recognizing the futility of his intended effort at that point, when his pale blue dress shirt had long since been marred by several red splotches, likely contributed as well. Either way, he let the towel fall back onto the table as he returned his attention to the matter at hand.

"Anyway, I have to apologize to you as well. This should be enough to pay for its replacement. At least, I certainly hope so."

Alessio heard the man's nervous chuckle, but soon understood why upon seeing the pair of bills extended toward him. The bright green was very hard to miss. A tiny grin tugged at his lips as, with little hesitation, he grasped the bills to accept them as his own. After all, who but a fool would refuse a free two hundred euro—especially when his shirt only cost him thirty?

"Uh… yeah, I'd say so. Thanks."

Transaction completed, Alessio saw a nod and a grin—though maybe, he thought, it was more of a grimace—from the man before he turned and guided the girl to the pizzeria's front door. He shook his head as he watched the pair depart. A near disaster occurred because of them, yet at the same time he received a tidy little profit from the ordeal. He glanced at his watch. The numbers it told him caused him to sigh.

" _I'd say about five more minutes before they're done. Damn, that wasted a lot of time though. Might as well make good use of what little I have. Hopefully I don't run into any other stupid problems."_

Why not? The table was dry, thanks to the pile of wet towels that were shoved to one corner. His laptop and his phone both were equally dry and, more importantly, still functional. With that mindset he returned to the computer. Not surprisingly, that program continued to run, displaying simple black box and a blinking cursor next to the phrase _Enter Password_. Uttering little more than a harrumph, he placed his hands upon the keyboard and typed the very information it desired.

—|1| **2** |—

She said nothing as she followed the man outside, instead silently welcoming the warmth provided by the midday sun. He didn't say anything either. It made perfect sense. Why would he after she put him through such an embarrassing, let alone expensive, incident? Her eyes found in the cobblestone walkway a more interesting view than the path ahead.

 _Fifty meters._

Though, maybe it was better that he kept his peace. The last thing she wanted was a public scolding, and a loud one at that. It would have been the most horrible thing ever. Well, maybe second most horrible to be honest. Or it could have been third, come to think of it. Regardless, she hated when he was angry at her. It made her feel absolutely terrible when she behaved in ways that made him angry at her.

 _One hundred meters._

And he certainly _had_ to be angry at her. She had screwed up majorly. In one instant she ruined some poor stranger's clothes and made herself and her father look like complete idiots in front of everyone. Because of that, she likely ruined their entire outing, and it wasn't yet noon. Now he turned to her, ready to speak. She could only imagine what terrible thing he was going to say, now that they were far enough away from the pizzeria. Far enough away from the innocent gentleman whose day she singlehandedly wrecked.

 _One hundred fifty meters. Mark._

"Hey, baby girl." With a widening smile brightening his face, he placed his left arm around the girl's shoulders while gesturing backward toward the pizzeria with his right hand. "What did you think of that little stunt we pulled back there, huh?"

Well… it was _exactly_ what she expected him to say. After all, they had managed to put enough distance between them and the scene. She could finally drop the charade and return to behaving normally. He clearly was not angry at her. He had zero reason to be angry at her.

Not to say it made her feel too much better, though. Her whisper carried more than a hint of disappointment.

"I wish I had enough time to deliver a more useful payload." Her shoulders slumped despite the comfort of his touch. "All I can really do is gain a remote shell and perform key logging."

He failed to stifle the chuckles that filled the air around them. A sharp beep soon followed, one that emanated from the long row of cars that filled the street-side parking. Among the plethora of small three-door and five-door hatchbacks was a three-door Ford Fiesta, and it was this dark-blue car that was responsible for producing that noise. He opened the driver's side door and dropped inside, while the girl ambled around the front so she could pull the handle for the passenger door. With one hand she smoothed out her white skirt before taking a step down into her seat. He waited until she shut the door before he turned the key to bring the car's small four-cylinder engine to life with a rumble.

"Cheer up, Valentina. You've accomplished far more than what I expected from you for today." His exhortation didn't quite create the desired result, so he made sure she understood what he was saying. "You did very well today. You do know that, right?"

The question was met with a guarded shrug, and nothing more.

Seeing a break in the traffic he carefully reversed the car into the street. Although it probably was quite illegal, he backed further into the intersection so that he could subsequently drive eastward along the narrow one-lane street. While it was longer, he preferred that route since it took the pair further away from the pizzeria and any suspicious eyes. Once he turned the car south onto a larger boulevard, he snuck a peek at the slouching blonde.

"Okay… I'm going to assume you know the password to that VPN client he was using."

She nodded. "That and almost every keystroke he's made within the last few minutes."

It was an assertion most regular people would've found ludicrous, especially when the girl appeared to merely stare in space with none of the equipment typically used by others to answer such a question at hand. But not him, for he knew Valentina was a very special child.

"See, I told you."

"But, _Papa_ …" She spoke with a high-pitched whine befitting a frustrated ten-year-old girl. "None of it makes much sense without any context. I don't know whether he's typing something new or making corrections to an existing document. I can tell you a bunch of monetary figures he typed, but I can't tell you what they were for."

In turn, his voice was calmer and more reassuring. "Baby steps, Valentina. Baby steps. You know that. Anyway, tell Priscilla what we know."

"Okay, papa." After a few seconds she turned to him a very curious gaze. "Do you think she wants a summary or a real-time feed?"

"Just a data dump and a brief summary should be fine." Despite driving among the notorious Roman traffic, he spared her a brief moment to meet her stare with an amused expression. "Oh, and don't forget to tell her about our little encounter with _signore_ Alessio Gaspari. I'm sure she'll find that quite the hilarious escapade."

"But that was your idea, I think. I didn't even know the waiter was there."

"Sure, but you recognized Gaspari. I never saw him nor would I have even known a Padanian operative was nearby if I didn't have you with me. Give yourself a little credit every now and again, baby girl."

Looking over at his charge was far too dangerous given the dense traffic he encountered, but at the edge of his vision he could sense the tiniest smile on the girl's lips. Slowly but surely, his hard work was paying off.

Then again, the old adage of _two steps forward, one step back_ always seemed to rear its ugly head at the most inopportune times.

"So, as I remember from a few days ago, you were telling me about this neat little rootkit you were working on. I wonder, how far along are you on it?"

Valentina turned very pale and began to shiver almost the instant she comprehended his question. "I… I t-thought that y-you… that I had…"

"Huh?" He needed almost no time at all to recognize the impending calamity. He only wished for a place to safely pull over and stop, knowing none existed. "Oh God, don't…"

Her shaking became more violent, further muddling her speech. "I… I-I'll f-finish… right… I p-prom—"

Fortunately, it was not the first time he had experienced such an episode with Valentina. From that moment he knew she would remain unconscious for the entire thirty-minute duration of their trip. Worse was the mess he would have to clean. He rather liked the white skirt that Priscilla had purchased for her, especially appreciating the patterns formed by the outer layer of lace. The odds of her wearing that particular article of clothing again, or the white T-shirt she wore for that matter, were extremely slim. The garbage bin was their most likely resting spot. Her shoes were spared. So was her denim jacket, but only because she had taken it off before going into the pizzeria, to her chagrin at the time. As for the car, he once again thanked providence for giving him enough foresight to order one with leather upholstery.

" _Might as well find somewhere out of the way to start cleaning up this mess before I get too far along,"_ he thought, lowering the windows with the hope of obtaining some fresh air. After a few more seconds of contemplation he peered over at Valentina's slumped, unmoving figure and sighed.

Life never seemed to grant Giancarlo Rossi a dull moment ever since he decided to join the Social Welfare Agency.


	2. 1: Welcome to the Agency

**1 | Welcome to the Agency**

 _Two years earlier…_

Giancarlo Rossi uttered a soft sigh upon sighting the moisture glistening on the back of his hand, the result of a quick swipe of his forehead. Surely the missing sweat beads had long since been replaced in the few seconds that motion had required. He felt as though ensconced in flames. A stiff breeze blowing in from the north provided him very little respite. All he could do to combat the spreading warmth was to doff his coat and suck in a deep breath. He gradually released the air from his lungs while laying the heavy wool pea coat across the driver's seat. Only then did he feel ready to lift the cell phone to his ear and resume the conversation that had created within him such nervousness.

"I swear to you, Sofia. This is going to be a good thing not just for me but for you as well."

"Hmm." Her tone, though measured, conveyed significant doubt. "Tell me, then. How on Earth is this new job of yours going to be any better for us? How is it going to improve the situation we're currently in?"

"Well… they're going to be paying me much more. I can't give you the exact number, but I think to say it's at least double what I was getting before. It'll help me take care of you guys, build up a nice college fund for Alex so he can go anywhere he wants in the world."

"Money's not the most important thing in the world to me, you know."

He nodded, even though he knew she couldn't see him. "I know, my dear. At the same time, you can't deny that it's a very good thing."

"Sure, but it's no good if it comes at too great a cost. I don't want to go through the same mess over and over again." There were a few moments of silence. "If you really want us to work again, then I'll need to actually see you more than every once in a while. Alex also needs a father figure around. None of that can happen if you're working all of the time. We've already been down that road before."

"You will get to see me, and more than every once in a while. I promise."

"Really?"

Certainly he sensed hints of suspicion in her voice, but he decided instead to latch onto her palpable optimism. It forced a tiny smile to his lips.

"Yeah. And I'll do everything I can to make sure of that, no matter what."

"Okay… Can you remind me again who this 'they' just happen to be?"

Fingers further mussed already unkempt hair as he contemplated his reply. "I'll be honest with you. It's a government job, doing pretty similar work like what I did with the Agency before. I really wish I can reveal more than that, but there are restrictions."

"Uh huh." Her skepticism was back and in full force.

"I know what you're thinking, but I just said that I would do everything possible to make time to see you and Alex often. Besides, if I couldn't then I wouldn't have accepted the job in the first place."

"Why not just take a normal job where you can come home every night and we can have an actual normal family instead of taking these super-secret government jobs, hmm?"

"It's… really the only place where I can use my skills for the best."

"Yeah…"

As he reached back into the car to grab his coat, he was unsure whether his shiver was due to the cold wind or her blatant disappointment. "Anyway, I have to go. My meeting with my new boss starts in about fifteen minutes and it wouldn't look good. But, don't worry. I will see you very soon, probably this weekend as a matter of fact." He hesitated for a few moments before adding, "I hope you know that I do love you, very much, and I that I really want to get back to the good times we had before."

"I really do love you too. I just don't want you to keep making yourself so sparse around us." Through her softly-spoken words, punctuated by a light chuckle, he could feel a tremendous weight of his apprehension lift off his shoulders. "Now, hurry up and go see your boss. The last thing I would want is to have you getting fired because of me."

A slight grin came to his lips the moment his smartphone's screen went black. It soon disappeared, a casualty of both a timely stiff breeze and his subsequent recognition that standing outside while holding instead of wearing his coat was not a brilliant plan. Swinging his gaze leftward, he could see looming hundreds of meters in the distance a low-rise building apparently constructed of solid stone. That was his destination, connected to the small parking lot by a gravel pathway. He slid his arms into the sleeves of his navy blue pea coat and fiddled with the large buttons on its front while setting off at a brisk pace.

" _Ah, finally out of this damned cold."_ His next thought after passing through a threshold guarded by twin glass doors and looking around came with a snort. _"Heh. Funny, though, that the inside of this place looks even more antiquated than the outside. Holy cow, what a tiny lobby! Then again, I guess they don't really expect many visitors."_

"Mr. Rossi?"

He jumped at the abrupt sound of a female voice and swiveled around to face its origin. From a door to his right emerged a short-haired brunette. The simple black business suit skirt and jacket she wore was covered by a tan trench coat. Both worked to emphasize the very apparent no-nonsense attitude also conveyed by the unwavering stare she leveled at him. In her right hand she carried a short stack of manila folders, the topmost one opened to reveal to her its contents.

" _Those must be part of a file on me,"_ he thought, blue eyes falling upon the set of documents before rising to meet green counterparts. "Yes?"

"I understand you're meeting with Chief Lorenzo. Please follow me."

"O-okay."

He rushed to catch up to the woman as she turned and walked down a narrow hallway. Heels clicked harshly against the wood floor and reverberated across stone walls as the pair made their way to a separate exit on the other side of the building.

"Um, who are you, if you don't mind my asking?"

She spared him only a quick glance, never breaking her stride. "Calling me Ferro is good enough. My job here is to ensure handlers like you are properly briefed prior to and supported during their missions."

"Uh… handler?" Confusion played with his features, forcing him to lift an eyebrow and tilt his head slightly to one side. "Is that like a field agent of sorts? The guy I talked to before—Jean Croce if I remember correctly—told me that my job wouldn't involve any field work. Well, not much field work anyway."

"And Jean is correct, caveats included. Your job does not merely involve creating unique technical exploits but also implementing them. Of course, the idea is that you will operate in an intelligence-gathering capacity well prior to any actual combat operations. That way, you and your cyborg are exposed to less harm." Bitter cold greeted them when she pushed open the door leading outside. "Then again, it is the cyborg's duty to go into harm's way when necessary."

"Their duty, huh…"

Waiting in the tiny, tree-lined parking lot was a light gray Fiat Punto. A soft beep signified the unlocking of at least the driver's door, which Ferro had already pulled open by the time she turned around to face a very pensive Giancarlo.

"You're not having second thoughts, are you?"

"I know what a cyborg is, relative to robots and androids. At a certain level it is… disturbing." He lifted his head skyward, massaging already mottled hair with his right hand as he did so. "Very disturbing, really. I understand that you're using children to create these cyborgs. After all, that whole 'I hope you like dealing with children' deal Jean told me seems extremely weird otherwise after being approached for a clandestine government job." A loud sigh passed his lips as he lowered his gaze to meet Ferro's. "I guess what I'm trying to say is that if I had any real worries about your cyborg program I would have backed out of this long before now."

Ferro nodded and motioned to the passenger side door. "You're free to get in whenever you want, but be aware that Lorenzo's expecting you soon."

Giancarlo did not need much time to comply, and within seconds the miniscule car's engine hummed to life. The first thing he noticed upon slumping into the seat was that space around his shins essentially was nonexistent. He had a few centimeters advantage over Ferro, but by the same token he wasn't quite that tall. While his fingers fumbled across the bottom and side of the cushion in search of the seat controls, he took a moment to peer about the cabin. An austere field of mostly charcoal gray comprising the dashboard below met a pair of tan pillars to lead into the headliner above. _"Kinda bland"_ was his mental verdict when comparing it to his Ford Fiesta's interior.

Aloud he asked, "Is this your car?"

"It's an Agency pool car. I figured it would be faster to drive to the offices than to walk, especially in this weather."

"Much appreciated." A grin appeared, but it soon faded as the stone building shrank in the rearview mirror. "So, Ferro, are you a handler as well?"

"No. I only work with them. Given the difficulties of your job—which, in all honesty, is one I absolutely do not desire or even envy—you guys definitely need all the help you can get."

He scoffed. "Heh. I love the tremendous amount of encouragement you give to new employees."

"Stuff it, Rossi. We sought you out because we believe you are both a perfect fit for what we intend to use you for and because we think you're capable of handling the stress." The narrow-eyed glare she leveled at Giancarlo made him flinch. "But, we _are_ human. We've made mistakes before. And we're prepared to correct them if necessary."

At that moment, he found more inviting the view through the side window of the sparse landscape as it passed by. Ferro replied with barely a trace of a grin as she returned her attention to keeping the car on the gravel roadway.

"Anyway, we are an antiterrorism unit, plain and simple. It doesn't require a genius to realize just how dangerous our job is. To counter that danger we choose exceptionally skilled people as handlers and provide them with cyborgs that are equally skilled, if not more. Even though you're not directly involved in combat, the same is true for you and your role."

"I understand." Silence dominated the next few seconds before it was broken by rubbing of wool against polyester. "If I might ask, how many handlers does the Agency employ?"

"You're the twentieth."

"Um… just twenty? That seems somewhat low."

"Cyborgs do not come cheap, and neither do handlers. Also, we're an extremely secret organization, much like your former NSA employers. Or, given recent news events, it may be more apt to say we're very much _unlike_ them."

"There's an episode I'd like to forget."

She readily ignored his subsequent groan. "In any case, the Social Welfare Agency's mere existence, beyond the public-facing side, is shrouded in absolute secrecy, even from the rest of the government. As you might imagine, that makes securing funding for our organization all the trickier."

"Clearly you're getting money, though, and an awful lot of it."

A half shrug punctuated his statement, only to be met by a dismal shake of her head.

"Not enough to accomplish all of our goals."

The foliage surrounding the roadway disappeared to reveal a series of buildings set roughly at right angles to one another. Giancarlo immediately noticed that most of them were long and relatively narrow, a sharp contrast to the square building in which he had met Ferro. Their earthen stone facades topped by orange shingle roofs reminded Giancarlo of a really ancient suburban apartment complex. Another feature he found interesting was that none of the structures stood taller than four stories. Then again, there was no pressure to build skyward when it seemed the builders had all the land in Italy at their disposal.

A fork in the road approached. Turning left would have taken the pair down a tree-lined road that ultimately led to a large plaza amid the buildings. Ferro instead continued straight, directing the tiny Fiat to a parking lot situated next to an edifice whose appearance was decidedly more modern by comparison. She pulled into one of the few open spaces and shut off the engine. Giancarlo continued to stare at narrow panes of tinted glass interspersed within drab gray concrete slabs that formed the exterior walls.

"If you're wondering, this is the hospital where our cyborgs are assembled and maintained," Ferro said, pushing open the driver's side door and stepping out onto sandy gravel as she spoke.

Giancarlo, still feeling somewhat bemused, did the same. "Sure, but why does it look so different from all the other buildings? Surely somebody could have given it a similar design to everything else here. It stands out like a sore thumb."

"It's one of the few buildings here that was actually built within our tenure. Personally, I don't really care what the outside looks like since what's inside is far more important."

"Fair enough."

Giancarlo turned to his left, peering over the top of the Fiat and past Ferro to the building's doorway. There he saw an older man with closely cropped hair staring back at him, cupping his chin in one hand while a series of furrows worked their way across his brow. Glasses obscured a better view of the man's eyes, but Giancarlo did not need to see that much to know the man was evaluating him. Knowing nothing else, he surmised that the unknown man was someone of great importance. On the other hand, he immediately recognized Jean and his piercing blue eyes affixed beneath blonde hair that was buffeted by the wind. Both men wore dark colored trench coats over suits and gloves, an obvious nod to the dismal weather.

"Welcome to the Agency," Jean said. He shuffled off one of his gloves before stretching a hand toward Giancarlo. "I hope you had no problems making your way here."

"It was easy enough, bar this atrocious weather." Giancarlo readily accepted the handshake. "However, I had no idea the campus was so huge. Why did you guys make me park completely on the opposite side?"

The nonchalant tone belonged not to Jean but to the unknown individual. "It was an obvious security precaution, given the sensitive nature of what we do here. That was why I had Ferro escort you here instead of having you make the drive yourself. However, I have been informed that all is clear."

"Well, uh, I'm certainly happy about that, _signore_ …"

"Pieri Lorenzo." He shook the hand extended to him by Giancarlo. "I am in charge of Section Two, the special operations branch of the Social Welfare Agency."

"Ah. A pleasure to meet you."

"Likewise." Lorenzo pointed an extended thumb over his shoulder, toward the entrance of the dull gray building. "Now, before we travel to my office to take care of the rest of our business, I thought it would be apropos to give you a quick tour of our facilities. Follow me."

Giancarlo did as instructed, trailing Lorenzo, Jean, and Ferro through the threshold and into the lobby. Indeed, Ferro's words rang true as the interior décor was far more modern than what the outside had suggested. The section chief was busy saying just as much. However, the Agency's newest handler was distracted from the view and accompanying speech by yet another blonde, this one far shorter than the man behind whom she stood. He bent down to take a closer look at her face and was immediately struck by her vacant stare into apparent nothingness. A shiver ran down his spine.

" _My goodness…"_ he thought. _"Jean wasn't kidding after all. Sure, I guess you can't have killing machines acting like actual children, but this girl—if anyone can actually call the cyborgs that—looks creepy as all hell."_

Creepy wasn't the word that Giancarlo imagined when he found his gaze directly meeting those same blank cornflower blue eyes. They disappeared just as quickly. He blinked, spending the moment to figure out why. Eventually he noticed her tremendous grin, one met with lidded eyes and a slight tilt of her head. One might have considered it a friendly gesture. Instead, it left him feeling very uneasy.

"Don't worry, Giancarlo."

The sound of someone speaking his name snapped Giancarlo from his reverie. Only then did he realize who had spoken to him.

"You'll have a cyborg of your own soon enough. That way you won't need to be so enamored with Rico."

"Rico, huh…" His hand muffled a few rough coughs as he cleared his throat. "Interesting name for a girl."

"Handlers are free to give any name they prefer to their cyborg."

"Speaking of which," Lorenzo said with a sharp inflection, quickly grabbing both men's attention, "it should be another week before the doctors will have fully prepared your cyborg. At some point today we should talk about what activities you have planned during the interim."

"I figure I would continue doing what I was doing. That's why you hired me, right?"

"Absolutely. But you are still a handler, and that means you'll still occasionally go into the field. Otherwise we'd have hired you as a mere tech, and paid you much less to boot."

Giancarlo knew it was a risky question, but he felt compelled to ask it anyway. "Why didn't you?"

"Because what we intend to do is more important than just writing a few lines of code. If that were the case, then anybody mere computer science graduate would do. No point in paying you damn-near half a million euros per year for that." He stopped in his tracks and turned to face Giancarlo, startling the younger man. "Don't you agree?"

"I-I can't argue the point."

"I thought so. Anyway, that's a discussion better suited for later, in the privacy of my office." He resumed his stride. "Right now, I thought you might want to have a brief discussion of what will happen in the future regarding your cyborg. Ferro?"

The woman nodded and held out toward Giancarlo one of the document-filled manila folders she carried. "Bianca Mantovani."

Confusion washed over Giancarlo's features as he accepted the folder. "Is there anything different here than what Jean told me at the hospital?"

"This is the girl's complete history, as far as we were able to determine," Jean replied. "I strongly recommend becoming very familiar with it prior to meeting your cyborg for the first time."

Ferro shuffled a few of the remaining folders she held in her arms before passing four of them toward Giancarlo. The move only further perplexed the man.

"Huh? What's this?"

"Dossiers on girls who would serve as backups to Bianca should anything go wrong with the conversion process."

"I don't understand…"

Lorenzo's voice was low and calm. "Converting these… unfortunate girls into cyborgs is an imprecise science at best. With the second generation of cyborgs, we have removed most of the complications through a combination of more rigorous procedures and tighter candidate selection. Then again, what we intend for Bianca is something far more technically advanced than anything we've previously attempted. Thus, it increases the probability of a mistake or unforeseen circumstance."

"However," Jean interjected, his brusque tone startling Giancarlo, "I wouldn't worry too much about that eventuality if I were you. The doctors are exceedingly skilled. And, even if something were to occur, which is unlikely, they would be able to correct the problem. In the end, you will receive a working cyborg."

All Giancarlo felt he could do at the moment was nod, so he did. Slowly. That motion, apparently, was his cue to Lorenzo to continue speaking.

"Now, I think it would be a good idea—"

Of course, fate had a different plan. Loud beeping derailed Lorenzo's soliloquy and drew the group's collective attention to Ferro. Or, more accurately, her coat pocket, where she had stashed a small radio handset. Fortunately the piercing noise lasted only for a second, but it was merely the start of what proved to be a more complicated situation. Giancarlo saw the woman reach inside the collar of her trench coat, retrieve a wired earpiece, and place a small loop containing a specially molded speaker over her left ear.

"Ferro speaking. Go ahead Bernard." Palpable apprehension swiftly replaced her initial calmness during those several seconds. "I think I understand you. You should switch to contingency plan zero-three and await further instruction." Another tense few moments of silence followed. "What's that Bernard? I didn't quite make out what you were saying. James? Come on, talk to me."

Lorenzo rubbed his forehead with the palm of his hand and groaned. "What happened?"

"Apparently the Bernard _fratello_ ran into an ambush. They expected and successfully engaged five to six Padanian operatives at the safe house. However, we did not have any intelligence on the presence of other suspected Padanian operatives in the area. These previously unknown operatives were the ones responsible for the attack."

"How many?" Jean asked.

Giancarlo glanced down just in time to witness a subtle shift in Rico's otherwise expressionless gaze. However, he couldn't tell whether it signaled concern or mere curiosity.

"Approximately a dozen. I couldn't quite understand what James said, but it appears the operatives are wielding heavy weapons, including at least one twenty-millimeter grenade launcher."

Clearly, she had delivered news the section chief did not want to hear. "The _hell_? Do you think it's possible they had advance warning of our attack?"

"It's difficult to tell." Ferro exhaled a deep breath. "Regarding the grenades, James did not say whether they were actually being used. Though, I had lost contact with him by then."

Lorenzo turned and started retracing his steps, heading toward the exit at a hurried pace, followed closely by his two subordinates. "Either way, you should go find out what assets we can wrangle on short notice." She replied with a quick nod. "Jean, go contact Major Salles to see what options GIS might provide. If nothing else, they might be able to launch an assault on the apartment themselves. If the Padanain operatives are acting as boldly as it seems, then they should have plenty of justification. Let's just hope these idiots don't end up blowing our cover."

The type of information he was seeing and the rapidity of its appearance was new to Giancarlo, but he was erudite enough to pick up on one crucial piece of data. It forced him to close his mouth and not verbalize the question that had initially formed in his mind. Instead he replaced it with a slightly less silly query.

"Um… none of this craziness is happening in Rome, is it?"

"Florence, actually," Jean replied. "We would be able to send another _fratello_ or two as reinforcements this were occurring in Rome."

It appeared the senior handler's remarks had reminded Lorenzo of the newest handler's presence, causing the man to slow his pace slightly. "It seems our tour will have to wait for another time. Your room in the handler's dorm should be ready. I can point you in the right direction if need be. We'll talk later once this problem is solved."

The interlude also served to remind Jean that he had one more duty to fulfill for the moment before going on to help extinguish another metaphorical fire. He lowered his gaze to meet that of his cyborg.

"Rico, you're free for the rest of this morning. However, don't forget that we have target practice this afternoon. Three o'clock sharp."

"Yes, sir."

Despite lasting for only a fleeting moment before she ran with determination toward the cyborg dorm, a brilliant smile had graced her lips. It's similarity to her previous grin piqued Giancarlo's interest. He couldn't help but to track her until she disappeared from his vision. It was a blessing that the trip from the hospital to the handler's dorm was relatively short, only a few minutes' walk along the gravel pathways. Still, it was long enough to allow him to contemplate that girl's strange mannerisms. In the end, it all boiled down to a simple conclusion.

" _Don't know why, but this Rico scares the hell out of me. I really hope I know what I'm getting into with this cyborg business."_


	3. 2: False Start

**2 | False Start**

—| **1** |2|3|4|—

" _That was…"_

Giancarlo dropped stack of papers atop a short pile of manila folders and slowly exhaled a deep breath. His gaze wondered back to the photograph of a girl with hair and eyes an equally dark shade of brown. Written next to the portrait was her name and age: _Bianca Mantovani, 13_. However, it was the many blocks of text below detailing her life and near death which inspired his feelings of revulsion.

" _I know these poor girls had to endure terrible tragedies to end up in a place like this, but this is just horrible. Reading this really puts it all in perspective. To see a young girl snatched from her family and… Gah!"_ Another few seconds passed, during which time he took a sip from the glass of whiskey on his desk. _"Then again, that's life, shitty as it is. This place wouldn't exist, and I wouldn't even be here, if people were inherently good. For Luciano's sake, I just have to do my best to put a small dent in the insanity that is this world."_

Apart from the dossiers on his prospective cyborg and the potential backups, the only items on his desk were a mostly empty glass and a mostly full bottle of Johnnie Walker Black. Contemplating for a few more hours on such a morose subject would flip that situation, which was why he pushed the folders aside and added one more object to his desk. The aluminum body of his laptop computer almost seemed to glisten beneath the fluorescent lighting. This machine was small, lightweight, and easily portable. It was also very unlike the far larger desktop and monitor setup that he favored. However, it would serve his purposes for now, so long as he could find an internet connection.

That task would have to wait. His ears detected a sharp grumble from his gut. The pain in his stomach corroborated both its source and the reason.

" _I guess it really has been a while since I ate breakfast."_ He glanced down at the watch on his wrist, a basic digital model. _"Jeez! Seven hours. Hmm… Lorenzo told me about the cafeteria. I didn't really pay too much attention to his directions, though. Hopefully it's not too far away."_

Only thirty minutes had elapsed since he separated ways with the lead handler, meaning that cold was still the prevailing temperature outside. He gathered his pea coat in one arm and retrieved the keys to his door from his trousers pocket. The door secured shut and locked, he swiveled on his heels to the left, soon pointing in the direction of the nearest stairway. Another door closed a few rooms behind him, the faint thud echoing down the hallway. Feeling curious, he stopped and turned his head around to peer over his shoulder.

Three steps. That was as far as he had moved from his doorway.

As far as he could tell, his mind remained firmly in his possession. Judging by the annoyed expression he received in return, his bespectacled counterpart begged to differ. In any case, she was the first to break the silence hanging between the pair.

"Hello. I figure you must be new here."

He continued to stare for a few more awkward moments before finally asking, "What are you doing here?"

"Dropping off a book on horticulture and picking up one about classical music during eighteenth-century Europe. And you?"

She delivered both her reply and her snarky rhetorical question with ease, as though she belonged and his presence in that hallway was an anomaly. But that was impossible, at least as far as Giancarlo knew. He needed to know what was going on. Standing with arms akimbo, he repeated his question with a firmer tone.

"I mean, what are you, a _cyborg_ , doing here in the _handler's_ dorm?"

She looked at the floor and heaved a loud sigh before meeting his gaze once again. "My name is Claes. I'm visiting my library here. Signore Jean has given me permission to enter the library whenever I like."

"Huh?"

He removed his hands from his hips and slowly approached the girl, eyeing her closely the whole time. At no point did she flinch. Then again, she was a cyborg. But she was also a child, or at least a teenager. He estimated her age to be either twelve or thirteen, making her only a few years older than his eight-year-old son. That put him in familiar territory, or so he imagined.

" _Can't really tell, but it doesn't look like she's lying,"_ he thought. _"Then again, it's hard to tell anything with these cyborgs."_

"I understand your suspicion. You can ask Signore Jean if you don't believe me."

"No, I understand that much. But, Jean? Wouldn't your handler have more to say about this than him?"

Her gaze dropped to the floor once again, though this time Giancarlo sensed more melancholy than disappointment in her expression. "I-I don't have a handler. I've never had a handler, at least as far as I can remember."

"Heh… never? That's strange."

"Not really." A miniscule grin formed on her lips as she shook her head. "In a way, it actually makes sense."

His stomach grumbled once again as he turned around, preparing to walk in the direction he had originally planned. "Eh, I don't get it, but I figure I'll find out what's going on with you sooner or later."

"It's up to you, but I suggest going this way instead."

He had barely taken his first step before she had interrupted him. "Excuse me?"

"Unless I'm mistaken, you're headed to the cafeteria." She lifted her left arm and pointed behind her. "It's faster to exit the building on the east side. That way it's essentially a straight shot."

"How do you know I want to go to the cafeteria?"

"Call it intuition. Or a hunch. It's really up to you." She punctuated that statement with a nonchalant half shrug before walking in the same direction she had indicated.

" _Okay, that was… interesting,"_ he thought, running a hand through his hair and watching her shrink in the distance. _"Maybe not all of the cyborgs are as disturbing as Rico. I'll still want to check the notes Ferro gave me on the existing cyborgs though to see just what's going on with this Claes."_ One more groan emanated from his midsection. _"Oh, and get some lunch for God's sake. What the hell am I doing standing around here?"_

—|1| **2** |3|4|—

Curiosity indeed had gotten the better of Giancarlo.

That was why he found himself standing at the door of the shooting range at three o'clock sharp. He twisted up his nose immediately upon entering the long and narrow building. Being a computer geek by trade, he was very unaccustomed to the pungent odors of gunpowder and gun oil. Waving his hand before his face provided him no respite from the smell.

" _I'm going to be spending a lot of time here anyway, so I might as well get used to the smell,"_ he thought, shaking his head as he continued walking inside.

A snicker to his right attracted his attention, bringing his gaze to meet that of the attendant. He raised his hands as if in surrender while frowning.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm a complete newbie at this. I got it. No need to laugh at me."

The other man shook his head while attempting to stifle any further chuckles. "Didn't mean to insult you." A few tiny coughs, muffled by his fist, seemed to do the job. "You're the new handler Lorenzo hired, right?"

"Yeah," was all Giancarlo said aloud, that word accompanied by a short nod. Inwardly he added, _"Apparently gossip seems to move around here just as quickly here as it did at the Agency."_

"Figured as much." He leaned forward, sticking his head out of the window slightly. "So, you're here to start your firearms training already?"

"Um… not really. I hadn't planned on it." He shrugged. "Though, I guess it might not hurt to do it now rather than later."

"In any case, you should probably go talk to Marco." Giancarlo's gaze followed the man's outwardly stretched finger until it landed on a man sporting a narrow goatee and wearing glasses. "His cyborg hasn't been doing too well lately, so I'd imagine he has a bit more time on his hands. Don't let his occasional foul mood put you off, though. He wasn't always like that."

"I see…"

"If that doesn't work for you, you can always go ask Ferro to see if any of the non-handler staff is free."

"I'll give Marco a chance first." He pulled his lips tight and hummed while continuing to stare at the man across the room. "After all, I might have some questions pop into my head which are better answered by a handler."

"Suit yourself. I'm just here to help." The attendant pulled his head back behind the window. "Oh, by the way, you don't happen to be left-handed, do you?"

Giancarlo tilted his head slightly to the side. "Not that I know of."

The attendant chuckled again. "Good. That means we don't have to worry about finding you a special weapon."

"That's good, I guess. Anyway, I'll see you later."

Giancarlo tossed a quick wave toward the attendant before stepping further into the range. Spread before him were ten shooting stalls, each containing a small bench and preparation table. He saw Rico in one of the center stalls. The young blonde's right hand held what he recognized as a semiautomatic pistol into which she slotted a loaded magazine with her left. Next to one of the center stalls stood Jean, wearing protective earmuffs and sporting a studious expression on his face as he observed Rico at work. The girl then lifted the pistol in front of her body and peered down its sights at a series of targets.

Even with having a faint idea of what was to come, he flinched.

" _Dammit!"_ He felt as though he needed to pick his stomach up from the floor. _"That was so freaking loud. And so many at once."_

Straightening up, he looked around at the other stalls and noticed two other fratelli. In the stall immediately to the right of Rico's was a smaller brunette with a bobbed haircut. There, a perplexed expression fell across his face. Unlike the fairly standard pistol wielded by Jean's cyborg, he had no idea what on Earth that girl was firing short of the fact it was a rifle. Whatever it was, it hurled bullets downrange at a frightening pace. He swiftly raised his hands to cover his ears when the first report struck his ears. Fortunately, the pain did not last for long, for she had expended the entire magazine within mere seconds.

"Here." The man identified as Marco stood next to Giancarlo, holding toward the latter a set of earmuffs. "It's always a good idea to bring hearing protection before entering a shooting range."

Giancarlo immediately accepted the earmuffs, nodding as he took them. "Thanks. I knew it would be loud, but I just didn't appreciate exactly how loud it would be."

"Now you know." Marco faced toward the stalls once again. "Anyway, I take it you're Giancarlo Rossi."

"I am. And you are…"

"Marco Toni." He stuck out a hand, which Giancarlo readily shook. "Welcome to the mess that is this Agency. How the hell a tech like you managed to land on Lorenzo's radar I have no idea—and as a handler at that. But, you're here now and you probably aren't leaving anytime soon, so it helps all of us to bring you up to our level."

Giancarlo decided to mimic Marco and observe the other fratelli at work as well, not that he had many other options. "Lorenzo has some sort of special mission for me and my cyborg. That's what he told me earlier, though he's yet to tell me what this mission exactly is. We were supposed to meet earlier this morning, but some sort of crisis derailed that."

"Ah. You're talking about the fuckup in Florence I gather. The good news is that we didn't lose anybody today despite everything that happened."

"Glad to hear."

Marco motioned toward the exit before starting off that direction in a slow saunter. It was an obvious hint to Giancarlo that he should follow, and so he did.

"I have plenty of time. All I have these days is time, so it won't bother me to train you. We should get you a gun or two from the armory, something simple to operate and maintain given that you're new to this. The Beretta 92 FS is our standard handgun, so I recommend we go with that for now. We'll come back a little later and start training once you have your kit."

—|1|2| **3** |4|—

"Huh." All Giancarlo did for those few seconds before he spoke again was to gaze contemplatively at the woman sitting at the table across from him. "He wants a camera. And a DSLR at that. That is quite the interesting present, especially at that age."

That woman, Sofia, could not help but to grin as she lowered the glass of wine from her lips. "If it's any consolation to you, I felt the same way. But it's a healthy hobby, and I can think of many worse things our son can be doing. It certainly beats sitting in front of the television all day long. Or a computer."

"Okay, okay… Point taken." The fork in his hands made a soft clang against the porcelain plate as he set it down. It made leaning across the wooden surface to direct a pointed gaze at his wife all the simpler. "But, I'm here, am I not?"

"Yes, you are here. And I pray for many more moments like this." She repeated her husband's motions, strands of black hair nearly brushing against the tabletop as she did so. "After all, I didn't marry you so that we could never actually see each other again, save for the odd visit on holidays.

"I know that, Sofia. And I regret not having the time to actually be a real husband to you."

A thud echoed about the room, the result of her chair striking the floor after she fell back into its cushion, sighing as she did so. "Which is why you've accepted a very similar job with similar restrictions on what you can tell and to whom and when you can leave and see your family."

"I…" He slouched under her intense stare, urging his mind to find an answer that would satisfy her. "You're right, in a sense, that I did choose the same type of job that contributed to the mess we're currently in. It's for a very good reason, though."

"And that reason is?"

Another sigh, though this one was louder and more desperate. "My brother. You remember what I told you about him, right? About how he died?"

"Somewhat. You told me he got caught up in some nasty business here, something to do with the Mafia or some similar crime organization."

"It was Padania, not the Mafia."

"Oh." A pall of confusion fell over her features. "But wasn't there something to do with the Mafia in how he died? I could swear there was a connection."

"Well, there was some attempted cooperation between the two, at least from what I heard at the time. Luciano had nothing to do with that stuff, though. I wouldn't know what the Mafia would want to do with a group that desires the splitting and eventual destruction of Italy."

"The money would be my guess. For some people money is far more important than anything else in their lives, even if it causes the world to fall apart around them." A few seconds of silence passed before she ended that line of thought with a shrug. "But, okay, so your brother was involved with crime and Padania was involved with his death."

He exhaled a deep breath and slowly shook his lowered head. "Yes… and no. They weren't the ones who shot him dead, but they put him in that position. Their beliefs, their actions… all of it is completely unforgivable, but what they did to my baby brother is the worst of it all. They manipulated a naïve kid into believing their bullshit message and now he's dead. Hell, I'd bet the people at the top don't really believe it themselves, so long as they can recruit enough young souls to fight their stupid little war for them. Poor Luciano's was probably only one of many." By then his whole body had started trembling as anger and despair filled him. "But he was my baby brother, my only brother."

"Giancarlo, honey…" With haste she stood from her seat and walked the short trek around the table to grab hold of his hand.

"I'm okay, babe. Really, I am. It's just…" Another sigh. "I hope you know now why I'm working for the government and not some private corporation or even starting my own business or whatever."

"Yeah, I do." She used her free hand to delicately stroke with her fingers the back of his. "Just keep in mind, vengeance is extremely dangerous. I don't want to lose you to that lust. Not that I could dare claim any holier-than-thou persona. I'm probably the last human being to criticize you for that given my history. But, I figure maybe you could learn from my mistake and not go down the dark road that I did way back then."

Merely looking at his wife and witnessing the raw anxiety and pain in her eyes told him everything he needed to know about how she still felt. The trembling in her touch merely accentuated that message.

"I hope I don't. I'll try my damnedest not to. That much I promise you."

As she wrapped her arms around his shoulders and pulled him into a tender hug, he reminisced about her words and the history surrounding them. _"She's absolutely right, and I don't want to make a liar out of myself. I just don't know if I can truly keep that promise."_

That meditative mood ended nearly as quickly as it had begun, broken by a tug of his left arm. Maybe he should have heard the light thuds of footfalls against the hardwood flooring as a warning, but by then it was too late. Not that it was ever a problem to be met by his eight-year-old son. He merely wished for a little more time to mentally change gears.

"Mama! Papa!" the child exhorted. "Look over here!"

Acquiescing to such a simple request led to the pair meeting the brilliant white light of a camera flash. It took about half a minute for their eyes to recover from the photonic assault. Conversely, Sofia needed mere instants to scold the boy.

"Alex! Stop right there!" Even while nearly blinded, she still had enough dexterity to hop past Giancarlo and grab a hold of her son's arm. "What did I tell you about using that bright flash?"

"But…" Alex looked down at the ground and mumbled the rest of his retort. "I did tell you before taking the picture."

"Yes, but you have to give us more warning than that. Nobody likes suddenly having a bright flash in their eyes. It really hurts." She shook her head and sighed before shifting the hand on his arm to his shoulder. Her other hand moved to tilt his chin upward so that she could look directly into his eyes. "Give us at least a few seconds before you take our pictures if you're going to be using the flash. Do you understand me?"

"Sorry, mama." His slumping shoulders and pitiable pout worked to eviscerate his mother's remaining disappointment and annoyance. She let go of his shoulder. Before running off toward the living room, he said, "I just wanted a really nice picture of you and papa."

Giancarlo spoke in whispered tones. "In a way, he has a point. I haven't really been around here with you all that often, so he misses us being together."

Sitting at the dinner table once again, Sofia gazed directly at her husband's face as she adopted a similar tenor. "It's what I've been saying. We need you here more often. We want you here in our lives. Which is why, even though I fully understand why you did it, I'm still frustrated that you accepted that job." Silence dominated their conversation for a few seconds, with only the tings of flatware against porcelain audible. "Anyway, I guess while you're still here in Naples, it might be a good idea to have a new family portrait made. What Alex said made me think, and it really has been a while."

"A few years, actually." A smile tugged at his lips. "You know, I have a few rather light days this week before my job truly has me busy. It should be plenty of time to find a really good photographer."

"Do you dare suggest that our Alex isn't quite good enough for the job?" It was a question punctuated by a wink.

"Surely not with that old thing." His chuckles echoed about the dining room, soon met by her rampant giggles and his sly grin. "But, maybe once I get him that DSLR…"

"Oh, don't forget the lenses as well. They're very important. I have a few select kits already in mind."

"Sofia, darling… are you sure it's Alex asking for that camera—" Giancarlo raised an eyebrow as he regarded his wife with a slightly tilted head— "or you?"

—|1|2|3| **4** |—

" _Wow. All those wires and tubes hooked up to her like that—and the specialized computer equipment too. I don't recognize any of it as what I'd see in a normal hospital."_

Giancarlo heaved a heavy sigh, leaving a small spot of fog on the glass, as he stared at the work occurring on the other side. From his vantage point he could see the doctors and technicians, five of them in total, milling around a space no larger than the patient's room at a typical hospital. A litany of machines strewn about the floor almost haphazardly served to shrink the room even further. Yet, the chaos appeared to have a certain organization about it. That was not in the handler's mind as he continued his thoughts.

" _Poor Bianca barely even looks human right now. Once they're fully done with their work she won't be human at all. She'd be more like… hopefully more like Hillshire's cyborg. Triela, if I remember correctly. I have no idea what I would do if she's anything like Rico. And, Lord help me if she's happens to take after that insane redhead."_

"We should be just about ready to release her from the life support machines and begin the awakening process."

The sound of a man's voice broke Giancarlo from his reverie and all but forced him to swivel around to see who was speaking to him. Only after recognizing the white lab coat and goatee was his apprehension replaced by confusion. He pointed an extended index finger at the glass.

"Shouldn't you be over there with the others, Doctor Bianchi?"

"I figured you would want an update on Bianca's status." Bianchi struck a casual pose as he leaned against the window. "At this stage, she's stable and everything is working as planned. So far, we have only experienced minimal complications with attaching the new implants to her nervous system. However, we won't really know if she's adapted to them until we wake her from her medically induced coma."

Medicine was not really something with which Giancarlo had a tremendous intellectual grasp, and the advanced kind practiced by the Social Welfare Agency was even further out of his league. So, he just nodded. After a while, he said, "I hope whatever you guys did to her works out well."

"While we do have a standard protocol for creation of the second-generation cyborgs that works very well, I will admit that the changes for Bianca are very substantial, which increases the risk probability for a mistake." He ran a hand through a closely-cropped head of hair. "By the way, have you thought of a name for your new cyborg?"

Giancarlo fell silent for a moment, his gaze fixed on his shoes. With a sharp inhalation, he looked up at the doctor. "Valentina."

"That's a pretty name, if I may say so." Bianchi leaned slightly forward, sliding closer to the handler. "And, though it's not my place, I'm somewhat glad you didn't follow Jean's advice on cyborg naming."

"He might have his reasons, but I figured it was still rather stupid."

"It's difficult to disagree with that assessment." Chuckling subsided, and his eyes narrowed into a concerned stare that he then pointed at Giancarlo. "At the same time, I would caution against being overly personal with your cyborg, and while giving a girl a boy's name might be going too far I certainly understand his mindset in doing so."

Unsteadiness in his voice belied the nonchalance of his shrug. "Maybe I'm being equally silly, but no other name really makes sense to me."

"Well…" He paused, taking a second to glance at the ceiling and contemplate his response. "If it works for you, then I'm not going to stand in your way. You're going to be her handler, not me." A deft sideways nod of his head signaled his intentions. "Anyway, I'm going back in there to begin waking Valentina up. You're free to join me if you want."

" _I do want to be there with Valentina when she finally comes to,"_ Giancarlo thought as he followed Bianchi. _"As her handler, I owe her at least that much."_

The pair ultimately approached an adjacent room, one smaller and even more confined than where most of the action was occurring. Giancarlo shivered upon being struck by a blast of cool air, forcing him to rub his arms with his hands. He scanned the room as he did so, rapidly finding among the various machines a computer desk tucked into a far corner. Bright blue light from the monitor filled an otherwise dim room, casting a silhouette around the person sitting in the chair. Despite the effect, it didn't take him very long to identify the individual.

"Good seeing you again, Ferro," Giancarlo said.

He could see that she swiveled around in her seat to face him, but not much more than that. Conversely, her flat tone revealed far more. "Do you have a name for your cyborg?"

"Valentina." A mischievous grin tugged at his lips as she typed the name. _"A mechanical keyboard, huh. I can recognize those loud clicks from anywhere. An IBM Model M, maybe?"_

"That's all I really needed from you." Ferro placed her hands on the armrests and pushed away from the chair. She stopped midway on her ascent. Not even the low light could prevent Giancarlo from detecting her intense glare. "I notice you didn't come bearing any gifts, Mr. Rossi."

"Um… gifts?"

Her declaration left him befuddled, but that emotion didn't last for long. Seeing an irritated Ferro spring up from her chair and close the distance between them with frightening speed startled him. He raised his hands in front of his chest, if for no other reason than self-protection.

"What the hell did you think you were going to do once she wakes up, huh? Did you even remotely consider Valentina's psychological wellbeing before coming up here?" She took another step forward. "That gift is not a mere accident of a tradition."

"Well, I'm here, am I not?" It was with a very gentle and careful touch that he placed his right hand on her opposite shoulder. "And, it won't do so much damage if I don't have it immediately on me, so long as she knows she will receive it soon."

She stood with arms akimbo and showed no hint of backing down. "I wouldn't be so certain about that."

"Hmm…" Bianchi's pensive utterance served to remind the pair that he still was in the room. "Lacking any real data, it would be interesting to see what her reaction is. Maybe Giancarlo's right and there's no real harm to be done." His eyes narrowed upon Giancarlo even as he continued speaking to Ferro. "Even if there is, it would be his mess to clean up."

Giancarlo muffled a light chuckle as he nodded. "Let's just hope I'm not so fortunate."

"Anyway, the whole awakening process should take about ten minutes." Bianchi walked toward the door. "Shall we?"

Only in the absence of that glass barrier could the Giancarlo fully appreciate Bianca's stark new reality. He was the one who had chosen her to be his cyborg—his girl. He knew every single detail of her terrible history that led her to the Agency. Yet only now, as he stood at the head of her bed, had he ever been so close to her. A few strands of black hair spilled across plain white sheets and over the edge of the mattress. Tracing them upward led to a round face that he remembered from her photo to carry a healthy tan. Instead, he shuddered upon seeing a frighteningly pale visage that revealed even more tubes and wires extruding from her nose and lips. The mask concealing her eyes and ears probably would have startled him more had he not already seen it through the glass.

" _It's… scary seeing her like this."_ Despite that thought, his curiosity overcame his apprehension. A finger lightly poked at the mask's metallic silver surface where her right eye would be. "Um, I figure this mask thing is how you guys transfer all that information straight into her brain."

"Somewhat," Bianchi said. He turned away from a monitor showing the cyborg's vital statistics. "We use other equipment for the early stages of mental imprinting. That mask is used to reinforce the neuronal connections that we force onto her brain, as well as to impress upon her the last bit of vital information."

"You mean, her name, right?"

Bianchi chuckled. "A cyborg who doesn't know her own name isn't all that useful, now is she?"

Appearing in Bianchi's right hand was a syringe far larger than any Giancarlo had ever seen. The doctor's other hand held a glass bottle, one voluminous enough to fill the syringe. A bright orange label marked with symbols unknown to the handler initially concealed the contents of that bottle. However, he soon could see Bianchi draw a colorless liquid into the syringe.

"What is that?"

He flicked the syringe a few times before uncapping the needle and inserting it into a small tube. "It's the drug that should wake Valentina from her induced coma. There's also a small dose of the conditioning medication, for good measure."

Watching as Bianchi pressed the syringe's plunger, which caused the liquid within to slowly recede from the cylinder and into his cyborg's veins, Giancarlo could not help but to utter a meditative hum. "That medication seems like pretty nasty stuff, at least from what I've read."

"To be honest, I'm not a tremendous fan of the conditioning medication or how it ultimately mangles a cyborg's brain. However, there's no way so far that we know how to create a cyborg without using the conditioning medication." He dropped the syringe into an orange bin branded with one of the few symbols from the trade his handler counterpart actually could recognize: the trefoil-shaped emblem for biohazard. "While conditioning levels are the prerogative of the handler, the good news is that the second-generation cyborgs do not require nearly as much conditioning compared to the original set. Furthermore, we're continuously working to reduce the base amount of conditioning these girls require, and Valentina here benefits from that work."

Giancarlo opened his mouth to ask yet another question that had racked his mind. A speaker fixed atop one of the monitoring devices beat him to the punch in the race to make a sound. It created a series of shrill beeps, which in turn forced a flinch from both men. Bianchi's fixed his attention upon the screen, his brow furrowed as he attempted to make sense of the constantly shifting numbers and graphs. Pure curiosity drew Giancarlo's gaze in that direction. A sharp yank of his arm pulled it back toward the bed. It had to have been from a harried and annoyed doctor, one of the others that had been in the room before his and Bianchi's entrance. That doctor's other hand inevitably would have gestured with a pointing motion toward the back wall, a wordless order to "get the hell out of the way." So, while swiveling his head around to face the bed, Giancarlo started shuffling backward to do exactly that. 

So strong was the force that had jerked him forward, it was a near miracle that he did not smash his face into the tile floor.

"What the—"

He would not complete that statement. Instead, Giancarlo slammed his eyes shut and grimaced as he finally perceived the biting pain in his wrist. An attempt to grasp that wrist with his left hand went unsuccessful. He needed that hand to brace his body as it was slammed into the floor yet again.

"Giancarlo!" That harried shout came from Ferro. She had raced into the room upon seeing the commotion in her video feed. "I got you! Hold on!"

By the time Giancarlo had regained his mental faculties he found himself slumped against a wall, his wrist held with a far gentler touch than the vice that had gripped it. He immediately realized he no longer was in the room with Bianchi and his cyborg. Instead he was in the dimly lit room with the computer, except it was much brighter than he had remembered. Beyond the most obvious question in his mind and a few others that formed in the interim, he wanted to know why Ferro there and why she hovered over him. A quick glance at an expression that contained far more anxiety than usual for the agent helped him to form the answer.

"You're very lucky that your wrist isn't broken, at least as far as I can tell," she said. "We'll have the doctors take a closer look at it when they're free."

Not broken was very different from not aching like mad. An attempt to flex that very wrist resulted in shooting pain along his entire right arm.

"Don't try to move it too much. Even if the bones are intact, who knows what other damage she might have caused you." She grabbed a hold of his left arm beneath the elbow.

As he accepted her help in climbing to his feet, he turned to Ferro with a very confused expression on his face. "What happened?"

"Well…" She hesitated for a few seconds before shaking her head and exhaling a loud sigh. Her tone, already solemn given the circumstance of his injury, became even more subdued after that. "I don't have any good news to tell you, or to Chief Lorenzo later today. The short answer: our one-hundred-million-euro investment just went down the proverbial drain."

"And Valentina?" He delivered that question upon a rough and equally somber whisper.

"Lorenzo is committed to making this project work. You will have your Valentina. I can guarantee you at least that much." Ferro turned and made a slow walk toward the hallway door. With her back still turned to Giancarlo, she stopped, took one more deep breath, and added, "It just won't be Bianca Mantovani anymore."


	4. 3: Starting Anew

**3 | Starting Anew**

—| **1** |2|—

"You have to listen to me, Manny." A loud groan filled with displeasure and annoyance echoed off nearby walls. The succeeding words contained very similar sentiments, if the slight increase in volume and lowered tone were any indication. "You and your ilk are going about this whole damned process the wrong way, and if you continue doing things in a stupid way, then you're going to ruin all of us. I'm not going to let that happen."

A glance at the office's rear wall would have revealed the dark outline of a slightly hunched figure surrounded in pale yellow light. That soon changed as the man who sourced that shadow leaned back in his chair, exhaling a curt sigh into the air. His right hand held a cell phone to his ear while the fingers of his left drummed the oak surface of his desk. The thumping increased in intensity in the several seconds his conversation partner needed to mumble his reply.

"Yeah, yeah… I am fully aware of the severity of the problem." His voice was not quite a shout, though its timbre was reminiscent of one. "What I don't quite understand is why you insist on not changing your tactics so that you can solve said problem. It's like the definition of insanity—doing the same things over and over and expecting a different result."

Yet another reply, this one compelling the man to slowly shake his head while pinching the bridge of his nose.

"Okay, think what you want. But, I'll tell you, you only thought you had an advantage there. I can see why you thought that, but you were wrong. You didn't have an advantage." The voice emanating from the speaker was more forceful this time, but the man cut short the response. "No, you _didn't_. If you _did_ , your guys would still be alive, and I wouldn't need to worry about taking on a goddamned new job right now."

Silence prevailed, but only for a brief moment. The sound that followed was the mangled cross between a wail and a deep-throated grumble. At the same time, the man used his free hand to massage the back of his head, his fingers intertwining and yanking at curly black locks. Another sigh from the man signaled a resumption of their discussion.

"Look, we can spend all evening arguing the merits of your strategy, but I'd rather not. For all I care you can continue working along whatever path your pathetic little mind thinks is best. Just don't come begging to me for funding as I've had enough of constant failure. Now, I have a few more calls to make, so feel free to get the hell off my phone."

Twenty years ago, Donato Lombardi would have slammed a sizeable handheld receiver down atop an even larger and more substantial body to end the phone call. Merely pressing a button on a touch screen did not provide quite the same satisfaction. Either way, he was just as glad that he no longer needed to speak to Manfredo. He had better ways to spend his valuable time. First among them was to make good on his denouement and start making more calls. A few more taps on the phone's screen unearthed the name of the first of many contacts.

Then he heard a piercing yell. Donato flinched. Another shout, one slightly lower in pitch, soon followed. With a hand poised on his desk to add haste to his escape, he shifted his gaze toward the office door. Nary a moment later he ascended from his chair, letting it swivel freely as he marched toward the threshold.

It meant someone would soon find themselves in major hot water.

Annoyance graced Donato's features as he stuck his head out of the doorway. "Okay, what on earth are you girls fighting over this time?"

Standing before him was a pair of young girls, both of whom matched Donato in possessing brown eyes and a complexion one might consider healthily tanned. That was where the comparisons ended, however. The older girl had long dark-brown hair that fell to her waist and carried a natural curl. Her sister's was slightly lighter in color, straight, and far shorter, ending in the middle of her back. The brown coloration in both girls' hair came from their mother, who all but ignored Donato to fix her ire upon the older girl.

"Perla! What the heck did I tell you about taking Agnese's toys while she's playing with them?"

At a mere seven years old, Perla was the elder. That didn't help her much when she cast toward her mother a bemused expression while clutching the doll closer to her chest. "But she wasn't playing with this one when I took it!"

"N-nu-uh!" Tears streamed down Agnese's face as she reached toward her sister, only nearly trip when her target spun out of her grasp. Her stammering, already a feature of her speech as a four-year-old, was enhanced by her sadness and anger. "I was p-playing with it, and then she t-took it from me a-and said I couldn't have it a-anymore!"

Fierce anger swept away Perla's confusion. "That's not true! She's—"

"Quiet, Perla." So stern was her tone, she did not need to shout to grasp the girl's undivided attention. "Give Agnese the doll. Now."

Silence reigned for several seconds as Perla stood still with her mouth agape. The porcelain toy hung to her side, slowly swaying with the movements of her arm as she deliberated her options. Not that she actually had more than one. Her mother's glare grew more intense, and her impending punishment became ever worse, with every second she delayed the inevitable. So, even as the heat of rage intermingled with sadness and disappointment, the young girl relinquished her hold of the doll, letting it drop to the floor with a light thud. Then, with a huff, she turned and started for her room, hoping to escape both the sight of Agnese's joyful conquest and her mother's admonition.

Sensing as much, the woman started after Perla. "Oh, don't think for a second you're getting out of trouble…" A gentle tug of her arm stopped her before she even made her first step forward.

"Oh, Luisa." Donato's prior annoyance had since subsided as he glanced down at his youngest child before turning his gaze to his wife. "Give the poor girl a break for once."

If Luisa was moved by his entreaty, she made sure not to show it. "I'm not going to let that girl get away with bullying her sister. She's better than that."

"Bullying, huh?" After watching Agnese depart the hallway with a slight waddle, he leaned backward against the wall, raised his chin upward, and exhaled a sigh.

"Perla needs to learn not to be so aggressive with Agnese. Just because she older, that doesn't mean she can just take whatever she wants whenever she wants it." The frustration in her tone grew, even as its volume shrank. "She already knows she has plenty of her own toys to play with, so why steal her sister's too?"

A tiny yet telling grin pulled at Donato's lips as he nodded. "I know the feeling, darling." It soon disappeared, replaced by a grimace. "Though, I've seen that look many times before, and it makes me wonder who exactly bullied who in this instance."

Luisa waved off his accusation with a shrug. "In that case, she should be old enough to know not to put herself in such situations in the first place."

"So says the youngest of four siblings. Situations like this make me glad I was an only child growing up."

"Oh, come on." Clearly her irritation had returned with full force, as evidenced by the heated glare she pointed at Donato combined with a frosty tone. "You make it sound like I enjoy putting Perla through such hell."

"No, I'm merely pointing out a potential bias in your consideration of this moment." He did well to conceal any intimidation he might have felt behind an impassive expression.

Expelling a loud huff, she crossed her arms in front of her chest. "Heh. Bias my ass. I'm only doing what's fair for the both of them."

"Quite the interesting definition of _fair_." Indeed, Donato had quirked an eyebrow in suspicion upon hearing the word. "I'd wager Perla believes she's received a raw deal right about now. Don't you think?" He then lowered the eyebrow and regarded Luisa with a look that shouted understanding. "Look, all I'm saying is to not be too harsh on her without giving her a chance to explain her side of things. You might be surprised where the real fault lies."

The woman shook her head slowly, but even he could see she was reconsidering her position. "Ever the one to deny needed discipline. You're always a bit too soft for your own good."

"Hey. I can be strict when it matters."

"Right…" A chuckle, mirthful but containing a hint of derision, slipped from her mouth to accompany her half-wink. "Anyway, let's hope that our dear children can stay quiet and peaceful for long enough for me to get some actual work done tonight. Not that I'm looking forward to any of it. Sometimes adults can't help but to act like kids. I have to remind myself that I only have three."

Donato nodded. "I feel your pain."

With his wife making her way downstairs, he retreated back into his office to make the necessary phone calls. A quick glance at the clock hanging on the far wall showed that it was seven minutes past eight in the evening. That gave him more than enough time for him to slump back into his seat and suck in a quick breath. As he slowly exhaled he shook his head and reminisced on the previous situation.

 _Despite the occasional insanity, they help me remember what I'm fighting for._ A chuckle escaped lips pulled into a wry grin. _Something of a microcosm of the insanity this whole country's going through right now, really. Though, if I have my way, we won't have to suffer for very long. So, let's call ol' Aldo and see if he's willing to help me along._

Only two rings were required before Donato heard through his phone's speaker the sound of Aldo's low-pitched and gruff voice.

"Ay, Donny." A cough and grumble were barely audible during the brief pause. "What a pleasant surprise to hear from you."

 _It's a good thing that old man can't see me right now,_ he thought. Indeed, were Aldo present in that office he would have witnessed a very wide smirk on the younger man's lips. Aloud, Donato said, "I'd be happy if that were an honest sentiment, but I know you better than that. You're still holding a grudge against me. That's not healthy, you know. You've gotta learn to let go."

"You're fucking with me, right? That was two thousand euro you lost me. It's not like I can just let it go that easily."

" _No_ , that was two thousand euro that you lost yourself. It's not my fault I was the beneficiary of your error. Besides, it was two years ago. I'm sure you've long since made it up by then."

"That's not the point." Another short pause, one punctuated by the raspy clearing of Aldo's throat. "Donny, I know that behind that shit-eating grin you're wearing—and don't try to bullshit me 'cause I know you just as well—there's something going on in that mind of yours. You're not the type to go about calling me unless you had a damned good reason to do so."

"Straight to business, I see. No time for idle chit-chat. That's the perfect attitude for the type of person I want to work on this new business project of mine."

Silence dominated for a few seconds before Aldo finally spoke. "Project, eh? I have no idea what you're thinking, but I'm damned sure interested in finding out." Donato could hear Aldo hum in contemplation. "You remember the last time we met in person?"

"Yeah, that restaurant you took me to." He nodded despite knowing his conversation partner could not see him. "If I recall it was fairly close to the river. It was also pretty damned expensive for what we got."

"I enjoyed it, for what it's worth. At least, that's what I told myself after paying all that money for that crap. Anyway, though, there's a little place I know on the other side that serves the real deal and not that fake stuff. How 'bout you come meet me there this Saturday around three."

"That's awfully short notice, you know. I'm a very busy man with many responsibilities and I can't just take off whenever I please."

"As awfully important as this plan must be to you, and it must be if you're calling me, I'm sure you can afford this tiny accommodation. Besides, you're the goddamned owner. You can take off whenever you damned well please."

It was Donato's turn to hem and haw. He took a brief moment to peer over at a calendar displayed on his computer screen. A myriad of colored rectangles filled the columns representing the days. Of particular importance was Saturday. Despite it being devoid of any boxes, their absence did not mean he had no plans for that day. Furthermore, it was already Wednesday, which gave him precious little time to make travel arrangements.

"That's awfully easy for you to say when you don't have any mandatory executive staff meetings that are planned weeks in advance." His frustration mounted, and it was evident in his voice. "Plans that _I_ made, mind you. Now, yeah… you're right. I can easily screw over my execs by cancelling my Friday strategic planning meeting with short notice so that I can hop on a plane to—" he nearly bit his tongue as he swiftly snapped his mouth shut and hummed— "to meet with you. Just keep in mind this would be yet another favor I offer you. What favors do you have in store for me?"

"The assurance that you won't have to worry about how you're getting there, for one," Aldo said. "If you give me the go-ahead, I'll get all the necessary transportation set up."

Donato pinched the bridge of his nose as he sighed. "Fine… fine. Okay, I'll let my execs know that our meeting will be postponed to Monday."

"Good." Aldo's tone carried more than a hint of satisfaction. "Besides, it'll give us a better opportunity to catch up on old times as well."

"Oddly enough, I'm actually looking forward to it. See you there, old man." Before Aldo could make any retort, Donato tapped a button on his phone's screen to disconnect the call.

Silence returned to Donato's office, but it faded in the repetitive clicking of metal striking metal. The sound's source was the heavy cap of an old Zippo lighter as it slammed against its silver-toned tank. He had received the lighter as a gift from his grandfather. Despite not being a smoker and thus not needing its flame, he had kept the trinket for its sentimental value. It gave his hands something to play with when his mind was otherwise occupied. Then, almost as quickly as it had started, the clicking stopped.

 _Yeah… Actually, that might just work. It's far from perfect, and Luisa's approval could down it before it even lifts off the ground, but I'll be damned if it's not worth a shot._

—|1| **2** |—

The room was beyond familiar to Giancarlo. Every aspect of its being, from its dim and depressing lighting to its chilly, cramped confines, matched his memory without error. Though her attire had changed, the computer monitor's light cast an equally imposing shadow against the rear wall of the brunette as she once again stared intently into the screen. Just as before, he shivered upon his entrance.

"Quite the pleasure seeing you around these parts again, Mr. Rossi." Ferro managed a slight tilt of her head in Giancarlo's direction. Though her tone was laced with sarcasm, Giancarlo returned the gesture without delay. "Let's hope our second time at this goes much better than the first."

He leaned with his back against the wall, turning his gaze toward Ferro. As he did so he cradled the wrist of his right hand in an almost unconscious motion. "Do we still not know what happened with Bianca?"

"Unfortunately, no. Our investigation determined that Bianchi followed Belisario's conditioning protocol for Bianca to the letter. Furthermore, Belisario found no procedural mistakes when he examined the video. So, we continue to consider this incident nothing more than an untimely and unavoidable mishap." After a beat, Ferro swiveled in her chair to meet Giancarlo with her own impassive stare before adding, "At least as far as our side is concerned."

"What're you implying?" Even as he towered over her, he couldn't help but to flinch at her barb. "That what happened to Bianca somehow was my fault?"

"You're a handler, not a doctor. So, such an accusation would be extremely inappropriate, don't you think?" She tilted her head slightly askew. "At least, that's the case for normal second-generation cyborgs. Your Valentina, whoever it might be, represents a complicated combination of cybernetics and computer technology. I'm as much an expert in writing software as I am a scientist or physician."

"Sure, but it's not like I wrote Valentina's code from scratch." He pushed away from the wall and placed his left hand on his hip. "Or did Caterina ever have any problems when she awoke? 'Cause it's her brain-computer interface code that I used for reference. If there were any problems with that code—and while I admit visual inspection is hardly infallible I did scour her code multiple times—I think I would have found them before then."

Ferro sighed as she returned her attention to the monitor. The keyboard clacked loudly beneath her fingers. "Indeed, Caterina awoke without issue. But that's irrelevant. Caterina, for all the value she provides the Agency, represents barely a baby step in the direction of Chief Lorenzo's ultimate goal." The sound stopped, and once again she turned to face him. When she spoke, it was with a voice barely louder than a whisper, one carrying an unusually sympathetic tone. "So we're clear, I don't blame you for Bianca's failed awakening. Not anymore than I blame the medical staff. For what it's worth, it may just be the case that, for all our tricks and technology, Bianca never really wanted the fate we planned for her. Maybe… maybe she decided to create her own fate."

Giancarlo was not an expert at detecting nonverbal communications, but even he could see her tremble, minute as it was, at the implication. Not that he could blame her. Nonetheless, once the concept entered his mind its heavy weight leaned upon his curiosity. His subsequent question was inevitable.

"Is that even possible? For a cyborg candidate to consciously reject conversion, I mean?"

"It's never happened before. Yours might be the first, if it's truly the case." Ferro closed her eyes as she sucked in a deep breath and slowly exhaled it. "I hope you can excuse me if I find fathoming such a thought to be… rather difficult."

A slow nod accompanied his reply. "I feel the same."

Giancarlo rubbed his arms to with his hands to recover from a sudden blast of chilly air that coincided with the dearth of conversation. A seemingly deadly silence would have permeated the tiny space if it weren't for Ferro's keyboard. Not talking gave the man a brief moment to reflect.

 _Maybe it's for the best that Bianca didn't survive. Given the horrors forced upon her, I don't know if I'd want to continue living if I were in her place. But, wasn't the conditioning process supposed to suppress such memories? I know I didn't want them to use so much of the drug with Valentina, but they told me that only mattered after conversion—that the memory erasure was identical for all of the girls._

"What prompted your decision?"

"Huh?"

He thought he had heard Ferro's voice, and a quick glance in her direction found the woman peering upward at him while wearing an expectant expression.

"Of the four candidates to replace Bianca, you selected Adelina. I was just wondering why you chose her instead of one of the other three."

"Ah." Folding his arms before his chest and staring upward at the ceiling gave him a few precious moments to formulate a response. "Well… I figured she was the most suitable girl for what I wanted out of a cyborg-handler relationship."

Ferro waited. She waited some more. When Giancarlo still failed to elaborate, instead giving her a curt shrug, she twisted up an eyebrow and decided to press harder.

"And what exactly do you want in your relationship with your cyborg, if you don't mind me asking?"

"She's… I know Dr. Bianchi warned me about being too personal with the cyborgs, but I feel more comfortable thinking of her and treating her as I would my daughter instead of as a mindless, inanimate tool."

"Maybe you should speak with Dr. Bianchi again, this time in a more professional setting."

He chuckled and cracked the smallest of grins in spite of her insult. "I know exactly what you're inferring here. No, I haven't gone insane. Not yet, at least." The levity disappeared behind a more solemn demeanor. "To be honest, the question weighed on my mind quite a bit, and I spent way too many nights drinking way too much in trying to find the answer. Looking at those girls and what pain they've endured in their awfully short lives, I couldn't bring myself to consider treating them in any different manner. I feel I owe them at least that much, even if they don't remember—hopefully—what happened to them to bring them here."

"So, by that metric, the fact that Adelina, at ten years old, is four years younger than the next youngest means—"

"Means maybe I figured she would be best since she would be closer to how old my little girl would have been," Giancarlo interjected. "Sure, Adelina is older by about four years, but all the other girls are older still."

Ferro had opened her mouth to speak, but closed it upon hearing Giancarlo's last sentence. Instead she merely nodded.

"But I chose her for more than purely sentimental reasons. At one-hundred sixty-two centimeters she's extremely tall for a ten-year-old, especially in her legs, which given the antennas located there only improves the range and reception for a broad spectrum of frequencies. But at the same time, she's not so large as to limit my options. She can blend in with children around her actual age and, with a little work, also mimic a teenager, someone thirteen or fourteen years old."

"I believe I understand your logic. But, what would you do in other scenarios, where the presence of a child would be inappropriate?"

He hummed for a second, cupping his chin in his hand as he considered his reply. "It… I guess it depends on the situation, really." Uncertainty prompted his initial halting delivery, but confidence soon set in. "If I can't bring her with me, I'll just have her do the same thing on the outside. Or we both sit outside. If we're dealing with wireless systems, then as long as we're in range of the signal we can monitor and intercept whatever we want."

"Certainly, but that doesn't answer my question." A flat stare accompanied her retort.

Giancarlo answered with a nod, one soon followed by a half grin. "I'd have to rely on social engineering then. Convince whoever needs convincing that Valentina's presence, while unusual, is merely benign."

"You don't really seem the type of person capable of such levels of personal deception."

His grin expanded. "Believe me when I say it doesn't require much. I know from experience."

"And how much experience could you possibly attain from sitting in an office and writing computer code all day? Really esoteric code maybe, but you're far from a field agent, which is a fact to which you've already admitted."

"Let's just say that my teenage years were a bit more… oh, shall we say, unruly."

"Uh huh." That simple utterance and the slightest of nods constituted the entirety of Ferro's response. Her gaze initially found the floor before travelling along the tile to a small cardboard box sitting near Giancarlo's feet. "I see you've followed my recommendation and brought along a gift this time."

"I'm a quick learner, especially after what happened last time. Either way, it's something more befitting of Valentina."

"Good. I couldn't imagine you bringing a firearm."

The chirping that echoed about the room was mercifully short, though its abrupt arrival and piercing tone had evidently startled Giancarlo. Conversely, Ferro maintained a veneer of calm as she turned toward the computer monitor.

"Dr. Belisario just notified me that they're ready to start the awakening process for Valentina."

Ferro rose from her seat to lead Giancarlo through that familiar threshold. She hesitated once her hand made contact with the door's steel handle, instead sucking in a deep breath. For all her willingness to needle the rookie handler, she knew just as well as he did the enormity of the risks he faced. Finally exhaling the air in a low sigh, she spun around and pointed a solemn stare at the sole person tasked with standing in the room and facing whatever outcome awaited him firsthand.

"I hope it's far less exciting this time around, for your sake and hers."

He couldn't help but to match the seriousness of her whisper with his own. "Yeah… Amen to that."


	5. 4: Waking Up

**4 | Waking Up**

—| **1** |2|3|4|—

Donato shivered ever slightly as he jammed his hands into the pockets of his wool overcoat. Though he had only been outside for a few minutes, it was long enough for a the black of that garment to slowly morph to grey as more and more snowflakes fell onto his back and shoulders. The same was true of his hat, a similarly black fedora. He hardly ever wore them, but as the air chilled further and more snow accumulated along the sidewalks and streets it seemed a smart decision, hasty as it was. As it would probably only get colder as the night progressed, trading fashion for function made sense in his mind.

Then again, a steady northerly breeze did him no favors either. He sucked in another breath and shivered again at the cold.

It was at that point that he longed for the seemingly boundless energy displayed by the trio of children as they ran along the street a few meters in front of him. A shout of laughter came from the youngest as that girl, her bright red jacket covering most of her pale blue dress, tagged her older sister's arm before dashing forward. An attempted return tag from the elder sibling went missed as her target slid sideways at the last moment. However, that girl refused to quit her pursuit, and with a deft swivel of her frame her white gloves found solid contact with red cotton. While she grinned at the victory, her younger counterpart could only pout at her defeat.

The younger girl's dejection proved ephemeral. Put so swiftly back on the offensive, she made a futile attempt to chase her sister for several seconds. Then she noticed the oldest of the trio lingering nearby. Flying around, her brown hair fluttering upward as she did so, she made a beeline dash at the teenaged boy with tremendous speed and agility for such a small child. Eyes wide with glee and hand stretched outward as far as she could reach, she all but leaped for the boy.

Her hand found nothing but frigid air.

His response to her miss was a sarcastic chortle, but it failed to compare to the boisterous, almost taunting laughter that came from the middle child. It drove the little girl to hop off the low curb and sprint after her sister.

"Agnese! Perla! You'd better get back on this sidewalk right now!" That call, with equal parts sternness and worry, came from the woman who they called mother—and who he called his wife. "And don't even _think_ about straying off of it until we get to our hotel."

Almost immediately the pair complied, and for good reason. There was relatively little traffic for a Saturday evening, but it was a mere momentary pause created by an upstream signal. It was a fact driven home mere seconds later as a Porsche drove past that very spot, a burbling roar from its engine as it accelerated by. Still, Donato could do nothing more but chuckle at the scene as it played before his eyes, confident that Luisa would ensure no catastrophe would befall his family that night.

"They're growing up awfully fast aren't they, Donny." The man who spoke those words was none other than the financier of Donato's impromptu vacation, Aldo Moretti. Chuckling beneath his breath, he turned a quick glance over his right shoulder toward the aforementioned man. "I reckon the youngest one—Agnese, right?—she's about four years old or so right now?"

Donato smiled as he nodded. "Yeah. And as you can see she's just as rowdy as you'd expect from someone that age."

"Heh. Enjoy it while it lasts, old friend." Aldo took a drag from a cigarette that dangled almost haphazardly from his left hand. "In no time, you'll be praying for relatively calm and simple days like these when she realizes boys exist. And the same with Perla. _Hoo_ -boy! _That's_ when you'll realize the true meaning of rowdy."

"Do you think I should invest in a twelve-gauge shotgun?" Donato's pulled his lips upward into a half smirk. "Or is the private security force good enough?"

"Both. Gotta put the fear of God in these boys from time to time, you know." While both men exhaled misty breaths in the cold air, Aldo's was mixed with an acrid cloud of pale smoke that wafted from his lips and nostrils. "Anyway, as much as I enjoy meeting your family and all—and you do have a rather cute one if I'm being honest—do you mind telling me what the _hell_ you were thinking in bringing them along on a business trip?"

"You don't think people deserve a mini-vacation every once and again?" A brief chuckle punctuated Donato's quip, one that was not met in turn by Aldo.

"True, but that's also a bullshit reason and you know it."

There was a brief pause, after which the younger man glanced at his surroundings momentarily before adding in near whispered tones, "It also helps to keep up appearances when flying across Europe for no other apparent reason."

"Now we're beginning to approach the truth." Aldo lifted his cigarette-bearing hand once again. "Somehow I figured that you weren't talking about that little tech company of yours when you mentioned a business project for me."

"A billion euro in sales per year is hardly little." Donato's indignant tone faded just as swiftly. "But, you're right. It's nothing to do with that. It's my… other interest that I want you for."

"Hm." After a few seconds the elder man huffed and cracked a wry grin that he turned toward Donato. "So, I see you truly haven't changed after all."

"Yeah. I guess not."

"And you really need my help with this."

Donato sucked in a breath and held it momentarily before meeting Aldo's gaze with his own focused, if not slightly amused stare. "Unless you're telling me that there's someone out there capable of doing the job better than you."

"Funny." Aldo's chuckling was borne more of sarcasm than mirth, a distinction keenly recognized by the younger man.

"What?"

Eventually he fell silent, taking the moment for another long drag on his cigarette. "Ya know, Donny? You're putting an awful lot of faith in an old guy like me."

"For a damned good reason." Merely remembering such an epic disaster made Donato want to growl. He didn't, but a hard edge remained in his voice. "Unlike some people that I know, you've yet to let me down."

"Manfredo, eh? Yeah, that was one hell of a heady gamble that blew up in his face as predicted."

Looming just across the river was Lombardi family's lodging for their impromptu vacation, the word _Mariott_ beaming in red atop nineteen stories of grey and gold. Luisa and the three children were several paces ahead, animated conversation and laughter wafting over the frigid breeze. It served as a stark contrast to the near whispered tones the two men adopted.

"Somehow I figured you'd know." Donato lifted his fedora slightly with one hand to rub his forehead with the other. "Anyway, I told him as much ahead of time how stupid and destructive his plan was. Yet he went with it anyway and, well…"

"He's done, I take it."

"As far as I'm concerned."

The finished cigarette fell limply to the slick ground, its flame finally extinguished by a deft smash from Aldo's heel. "You think you have a much better plan, hmm?"

"I have some fairly novel ideas. Ideas which don't boil down to doing the same damned failed strategy over and over again." Standing in the middle of the pedestrian bridge, Donato watched as his family disembarked on the other side beneath the pale amber lamps. "Luisa would want to know that I won't be in our room for a while longer."

—|1| **2** |3|4|—

 _Silence_. That was the first thing she heard. Absolute, unmitigated silence. She didn't particularly mind the absence of sound. Part of her even reveled in it, but at the same time she sensed that something was missing. It annoyed her to no end that she couldn't quite figure out exactly what it was.

 _Annoyance_. That was the first thing she felt. Her second feeling was cold, the deepest chill she had ever experienced in her short existence. A second frigid tremor soon ran down her spine, and then a third. This new sensation confused her. What made her feel so cold? Was it something out… there? How could she find out?

Ah.

Opening her eyes, she saw… nothing. Absolutely nothing. An omnipresent darkness enveloped her, weighed upon her. And yet, at the same time, she felt weightless, as though she floated in the deepest vacuum of space.

Maybe she was in outer space. How could she tell? She had no idea of the concept of normal. What even was space? All she knew was… her knowledge.

Her knowledge. Her purpose. And, him.

"Oh. That's right. Him. His name… I know it…"

Suddenly, a shrill beep shattered the silence, destroying whatever thought her mind had generated. Chaos reigned in her consciousness yet again.

"…Hmm? What… where…?"

Another beep shook her from a stupor she didn't even know she was in, even more than the continuing frigidness.

"Where… where am I?"

A third sharp noise prefaced the end of the darkness. Instead, a series of peculiar shapes appeared and floated around her in the otherwise empty void.

"Huh? What are…?"

Almost as soon as she questioned their meaning, the very answer exploded into her understanding. She comprehended everything, and all those shapes, those _numbers_ and _letters_ and _symbols_ , they made sense to her…

…Except for that set over there.

"Hmm… That's not… right."

Those very wrong characters flittered around in space, shifting and twisting until they changed into a different set. How they did so, she could not yet fathom. Still, when they stopped to present themselves to her, they failed to impress.

"No… What…? How do I make this right?"

Instinctually, she stuck out her hand. Upon doing so she realized she could control the characters. She could change them at will. She could correct the error in their form and order and make them _right_. They flipped and turned, creating a new sequence, one which satisfied her only slightly more than the last. Her third attempt was far better, however. Better, but not perfect.

"I'm so close… Please…"

That's when she felt she no longer was alone in the void, beyond the symbols which kept her company. The cold was at its absolute worst, yet a comfortable warmth filled her at the same time, swirling both within and through her.

"It's _him_ …"

She swiveled around, trying in desperation to find where he was. She could feel him and his warmth, yet she couldn't quite see him. It frustrated her. However, she soon pinpointed his location. How she managed such a feat she didn't care to question. She had found him. But…

The once impenetrable veil of darkness, illuminated only by those lovely characters, lifted to reveal the one other thing she longed to witness. It was his face, shrouded by a sterile concoction of beiges and silvers and greys. There he was, right before her… and his timing could not have been any worse.

"But, I-I'm not done. It's not right… It's… It's wrong, and I didn't make it right. I didn't mean to… Mr. Rossi… I couldn't fix it… I'm sorry I failed you…"

—|1|2| **3** |4|—

Within view of the Limmat river stood the Alpenrose, a restaurant claiming to serve a traditional Helvetian cuisine. Spray-painted grafitti on its external stone and brick façade belied a rustic interior filled with copious quantities of polished wood adorning the floor and walls. Inside sat Donato and Aldo at a table nestled in a rear corner. This visit marked Donato's second, while Aldo had dined there once more. Nevertheless, they were greeted by a surprisingly boisterous atmosphere, which at any other time would have greatly annoyed them. Now, it provided a decent amount of background noise to mask their conversation. Red droplets continued to swirl around the half-filled wine glass in Aldo's hand as he turned an inquisitive look toward his companion.

"So, this new venture of yours, Donny. Tell me I'm not wasting my money flying you out here just for you to tell me some bullshit."

"Again, you know I wouldn't even be here if you thought otherwise, Aldo." Donato couldn't help but chuckle for a moment before a more serious visage fell over his face. "Anyway, I'm certain you know about the Italian government's counter-terrorism operations."

"The Agency. You don't need to dance around the point."

Donato leaned forward slightly and raised an eyebrow, his interest very clearly piqued. "How much do you know about it?"

"Nothing more than what anyone else knows, bar all these rumors floating around. They keep a very tight lid on information. None of the old SISDE guys—or, hell, any of the AISI guys I speak to on occasion—have any idea what goes on in there."

"Hm." Donato leaned back in his seat and glanced upward at the ceiling before the most miniscule of grins tugged at his lips. "And if I were to ask you if you were interested in finding out?"

"I'm here, aren't I?" Aldo lifted his glass to his lips to take another sip of his merlot. "The way I see it, nobody knows anything, and the people who do know are so tight-lipped that it'd be a rather frosty day in hell before they whisper a word. But, you have that plan of yours, which—and I'm not supposing to be the smartest man around, but I'll wager a guess it's to pry open that proverbial goddamned lid and peek inside."

"Exactly."

"Who else is on this team of yours that you're putting together?"

"I haven't asked them yet, but I'm thinking of bringing on Alessio Gaspari as my technical expert and—"

"Wait, he works for you, right?"

"Yes, but—"

"And you trust him?"

"Do you know something that I need to know about Alessio?"

"I just want to make sure that you're not about to do something rather stupid." A hum emanated from Aldo's lips as he twisted the nearly empty glass between his fingers. "And I sure as all hell don't want this to drag me down with you."

Donato nodded. A few seconds of contemplative silence passed before he spoke again. "I trust him, Aldo. Maybe Alessio and I don't have quite the history that I have with you, but there's nobody else I can think of who I'd rather have in this role, and not merely because of his programming skills."

"If you think he's good enough, then that's fine by me. Who am I to complain?" The expression he received from Donato prompted him to continue. "Well… any more than I already bitch about things. And, I do reserve the right to change my mind on this. Anyway, who else?"

"Filippo Albini, to deal with any direct engagements with the Agency."

"Interesting." A thin cotton tablecloth muffled the impact of Aldo's wine glass against the wood surface below. "I hope you don't mind my veto, not that it makes a difference."

"And what's wrong with him?"

"I'm sure Filippo's perfectly skilled and whatnot, trustworthy, _blah blah blah_. But, hear me out. I have a much better name for you: Simona Silvestri."

"Huh. I didn't peg you the equal-opportunity type. Otherwise, I can't say I get where you're going with this."

A smirk accompanied Aldo's chuckle. "We all must adjust to these changing times, right Donny? But, seriously, think about it. There's a certain, _obvious_ profile to the type of person typically involved in that line of work, isn't there."

"And Simona, being a woman, doesn't really fit that profile." With comprehension gained, a slow nod accompanied his words.

"Makes it just that slight bit easier to avoid spying government eyes, so long as we don't royally screw up anywhere else."

"Understood. But, I know pretty much nothing at all about her besides that she's ex-Army."

"Truth be told, I know Alessio just about as much, which makes us even in a weird way. But, I trust her as much as you trust him. Moreover, we trust each other, even if you are a right smug asshole sometimes."

"And you a paranoid old bastard."

"Amen to that." After raising his empty glass to make a sarcastic toasting gesture, Aldo pushed himself up from his chair. "Anyway, I truly wish we could talk more business, but _somebody_ brought their family along, and that certain somebody really needs to go tend to them before awkward questions start getting asked. I'm sure you can handle the check."

Donato scoffed as he shook his head. "Forgot to mention cheap."

"The least you can do for the guy who flew your asses up here on short notice." Aldo pulled a small card from his pocket and placed it on the table next to Donato's glass. "You still know what to do with this?"

"It hasn't been so long that I've forgotten the basics."

"Good. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a few calls of my own to make, not the least of which concerning your flight back home."

"We're still leaving at one tomorrow afternoon, right?"

"Only if you don't want a few hours to tour the city. You did say something about a mini-vacation. Just thought you and yours might want to take advantage." After donning the coat and hat sitting in the adjacent chair, he patted Donato once gently on his shoulder. "I don't want to hear about you getting in any trouble, alright?"

Watching Aldo trudge toward the exit, Donato let his grin spread unabated. _"And that's why I still love the old guy."_

—|1|2|3| **4** |—

Giancarlo sighed, once again leaving fog upon the thick glass between him and that dreaded room. A nearly identical scene played before the man, although a different girl rested upon that thin cushion. The doctors moved about with practiced precision between the litany of wires, tubes, and life-support machines attached to that poor patient. He could barely make out any of their conversation, though even if he could he doubted he would understand much of it. But, he did manage to glean from their tone and mannerisms that everything was working to plan.

Then again, all went according to plan the last time, too. Until it all went wrong.

Of course, Belisario was present this time. As the doctor directly responsible for constructing the cyborgs, he would be able to respond more immediately to any issues, if not prevent them outright.

"We're just about ready for you, Giancarlo." It was Bianchi's familiar voice that sounded alongside the man. "Let's just hope that Valentina responds better to the awakening process this time around."

"I don't think I can deal with having my wrist nearly broken again." His voice didn't quite match the tone of his quip. "Or having to go through this ordeal a third time, for that matter."

"You're not alone with that sentiment, I assure you. Though, that's the reason you've not yet been invited into the room. Only once we're certain she will awaken properly will we let you inside."

Giancarlo nodded, but a new feeling of concern fell over him. "But what if I'm not in the room with her when she awakens? That's not good for her imprinting, I take it."

"You will be in there before she opens her eyes. We can guarantee at least that much."

The presence of that incredibly large syringe, this time in Belisario's hands, filled once more with that mysterious clear liquid signaled the start of Valentina's awakening. Giancarlo examined his watch. Thirty-six seconds from the last time that plunger was pushed, he was thrown against hard tile by that very wrist and all the Agency's hopes, as well as about one hundred million euro, were tossed out the proverbial window. Another glance showed that more than a minute had elapsed. One by one, each of the doctors inside the small room departed, taking care to move the machines to designated cubbies before passing the threshold. Belisario was the last one to leave. That was after three minutes. Then, it became time for him to make his appearance.

"She's ready for you, Mr. Rossi," Belisario said as he walked past.

Another shiver tore down Giancarlo's spine, though this time it had nothing to do with the frigid air surrounding him. Clutching the box tight in his hands, he took one step, then another. His third step took him through the doorway, into the very room containing Valentina.

His Valentina.

Giancarlo paused the moment he saw the girl. It was one thing to see the picture of what she was before, or of the end result of Louis Duvalier's handiwork. It was another thing still to see her through that glass. To be in the same room as Valentina, with no obstructions between, and with the knowledge that this time she will come to life and be his, it nearly left him petrified with apprehension. But, he knew that there was no turning back. The time for that was during his initial meeting with Jean.

"So, here she is," he whispered. He sucked in a deep breath and held it for a few seconds before exhaling. "Alright, let's not screw this up."

Soon he stood immediately next to the bed, alongside Valentina. He could see the minute up-and-down motions of her chest. Feeling her warm breath against an outstretched hand confirmed his notion. For some reason, his trepidation seemed to melt away, replaced by a renewed confidence. He couldn't help but to smile as he lightly brushed her forehead with that same hand.

" _I know she's not supposed to be human, but her skin feels so real. And warm."_

Then he flinched. Flicking his gaze downward, he saw the slightest movement of Valentina's head. Remembering his previous encounter with a waking cyborg, he tensed and prepared to dive backwards, even while knowing he had no real chance to successfully evade her should she attack. Instead, she merely shuffled her head from one side to the other, then back again. After doing that a few more times, she turned her head to directly face him. A striking pale blue pair of eyes soon met his. And it caused him to flinch yet again, as he sensed abject fear.

"Valentina?"

Her mouth opened but no sound came out, her breath hitched in her throat. When she finally spoke, he sensed a strange tension in her high-pitched voice.

"G… G-Gian… I-I… c-c-couldn't… I-I'm…"

Maybe he should have stepped backward after all.

"Giancarlo! Are you alright?" Bianchi was the first to enter the room, and it was his voice that Giancarlo heard. "I've never before seen that type of response from any of the girls upon awakening."

Belisario and Ferro entered soon thereafter, the former heading directly for Valentina, first turning her head sideways to ensure that she could breathe and then retrieving a penlight and stethoscope from his lab coat pocket. The Agency could not afford yet another failure. The latter, meanwhile, tended to the stunned handler.

"While it's a marked improvement in every possible way from what you experienced with Bianca, I honestly can't imagine you expected _that_ for your first proper meeting with Valentina." Ferro held out a towel. "Here. Go clean yourself up."

"What about Valentina," Giancarlo said, all but snatching the towel from her hand. "Is she okay?"

"Your cyborg's currently unconscious. However, all of its vitals are functioning properly from what I can detect." Belisario walked toward some of the equipment that had previously been attached to Valentina. "Of course, we will need to perform a more thorough examination to be absolutely certain."

"That's…" Giancarlo exhaled a relieved sigh as he began wiping at the front of his suit with the towel. "That's exactly what I wanted to hear, really." Peering down at his shirt, he uttered a sarcastic chuckle upon examining the formerly white fabric. "Yeah… this shirt's pretty much ruined now."

"And your trousers. Maybe even your shoes. It's quite a long way to the handlers' dorm from here." Ferro sighed, and her dry tone softened. "Given the unusual circumstances, I'll spare you a 'walk of shame' and have someone, maybe Amadeo if he's nearby, bring you a fresh set of clothes."

"Thanks."

Giancarlo stood in front of the glass once again roughly thirty minutes later, now wearing new trousers and a blue button-down shirt from an already small and seemingly shrinking formal wardrobe. Valentina laid in repose on the other side, awakened and yet not truly awake. Still, the most important part had been done, and she had survived it relatively unscathed. He almost didn't mind that she had ruined his favorite suit. For all he knew, she did him a favor. In any case, it wouldn't be long before she awoke again. Indeed, only a minute had passed before he was summoned into the room to join his cyborg.

It felt akin to déjà vu, seeing Valentina laying there on that bed. The sheets had been changed since the incident, so that everything would be as pristine as a true first meeting. He held the box containing her gift at his side as he cautiously approached her bed. But, he knew it was a lie. At that moment, he only wondered if Valentina would recognize the same.

Her stirring figure portended her answer. A few seconds later, she pushed herself upright and onto her side, the bedsheet beneath which she was ensconced still draped loosely over her body, and directed at him an intense stare and a frighteningly creepy smile.

"Mr. Rossi…"

"Hello, Valentina." Despite everything, he not only maintained a calm visage but also managed a smile. "I'm happy to see that you're awake. Also, you don't have to be so formal with me. Just call me Giancarlo for now."

"I… I did it, Mr. Ros… I-I mean, G-Gian… Giancarlo." Her eyes seemingly lit up as she nearly hopped in place with excitement. "I did it!"

His smile faltered under suddenly overwhelming confusion. "Um… What exactly did you do?"

"I fixed myself. I discovered that my optical sensors' interface with all my other sensors had a programming error, and I managed to fix it." With a great heave, she leaned across the bed, drawing herself ever closer to her handler. "I'm finally useful to you now, Giancarlo."

The happy astonishment Giancarlo exuded externally provided a stark contrast to his internal apprehension. "T-that's wonderful, Valentina. I'm very happy you were able to do that."

"I imagine we're ready to start on our first mission, Giancarlo?" Her previous glee was replaced by eagerness. "That's why you're here, right?"

"Uh… not quite yet. We will get to that, but we have a lot to do before we get to that point."

 _Soul-crushing disappointment_ might have been an understatement from what he witnessed. All joy seemed to fade from her features, replaced by blankness. That she collapsed back onto the bed while showing no other apparent emotion startled him. As she stared upward at the pale white lights embedded in the ceiling, he remembered the item he held in his hands. He hoped his gift would help to assuage her pain.

"Valentina…? I, um, brought this for you."

No reply. Sucking in a deep breath and holding it, he carefully considered his next words.

"It will help you to train faster and become even better at your duty, so that you can do for me even sooner the missions that you were designed. You'd like that, right?"

That got the desired response.

"Really?" She rolled onto her side to view the box that he placed alongside her on her bed. "What is it?"

"It's a specialized MacBook Pro." He grinned, and it was only partially forced. "I know you have your own built-in hardware, but it never hurts to have two, am I right?"

"And, I get to keep it?"

"Absolutely. It's all yours, Valentina."

Her joy returned with full, bouncing force. "Thank you, sir. I'll take good care of it. I promise."

A beat, and then a cough.

"U-um… Valentina…?"

In her excitement to properly examine her new toy she shifted around on the mattress to sit upright, folding her legs beneath her. Inevitably, with all her movement, the bedsheet fell from around her. While it was true that the Agency had ensured Giancarlo obtained all required information on his cyborg's physical features, it was the first time he had seen her in the flesh. Literally, in this case. Logically, it made sense that the cyborgs would not be clothed prior to their first awakening, and he knew it just as much. However, he was not mentally prepared to see said cyborg sitting topless in front of him.

It would soon get worse. Much worse.

"Giancarlo?" Her voice carried a childlike innocence that mixed with her curiosity and confusion. "What's wrong? Why is your face red?" She scrutinized her handler with narrowing eyes. "Is it…"

"I'm fine, Valentina." He turned his head in a vain attempt to avert his gaze. "Just—"

"But, Giancarlo!"

Cyborgs had priorities. Naturally, her handler's health and safety was at the absolute top of her list. Sensing what could only have been distress, she leaped from the bed and bolted toward him to assist him any way she could. In doing so, there was nothing preventing Giancarlo from seeing all of her, whether he wanted to or not.

"There's nothing wrong with—Valentina!"

Giancarlo didn't intend to shout, especially with such a panicked voice, but circumstances gave him no real choice. The girl's abrupt decision to dash toward him didn't help matters, but it was far from the worst of his situation. That had to do with the fact that, despite being a prototype third-generation cyborg, Valentina—like all the cyborgs that preceded her—still lacked complete motor control immediately upon awakening. A single step was all that she managed before losing her balance and tumbling forward uncontrollably. Fortunately, for her sake, she did not slam face-first into the hard tile below.

He was not so lucky. Realities of physics dictated negated her relatively light fifty-kilogram weight in favor of her elevated speed at the moment. The collision sent the pair sprawling to the floor. That alone would have been bad enough for the man. As he attempted to regain his bearings, he very swiftly remembered that there was a buck-naked ten-year-old girl lying directly on top of him.

"G-Giancarlo, I'm s-sorry, sir…"

"Valentina." It took all of Giancarlo's restraint to not shout a second time. "Can you roll off of me? Because I'd be very happy if you did so right now."

She nodded, and with fairly minimal effort she heaved her body off of Giancarlo's. That allowed him to push himself upward, making sure to avoid looking at the girl as he did so. In those few seconds of peace he took a few deep breaths to obtain some semblance of calm.

"Now, I also got some clothes here for you to put on. It's in the bag sitting at the foot of the bed. Can you join me outside once you've put them on?" He raised his arm and pointed toward a door opposite the one he used as his entrance. "I'll be waiting for you there."

Giancarlo made a swift exit from the room with nary a rearward glance, assuming that Valentina had witnessed his gesture. Once out in the hallway, he sank down into one of the two leather chairs positioned there for exactly such a purpose. A heavy sigh slipped his lips.

"Holy hell. That could have gone way better," he muttered. Thinking back on the incident caused him to flush yet again. "I know she's a cyborg, and not a real girl, but…"

"Your Valentina gave you quite the scare, I recon." Bianchi settled into the opposing seat. "Having said that, she's very much active and functioning within our parameters. Both coarse and fine motor control have improved dramatically even within the short amount of time you've been sitting out here."

"I'm glad to hear that."

"Though, you might want to go check up on her in the next minute or so."

That statement piqued Giancarlo's interest, sending an eyebrow perched upward. "Why's that? Did something happen?"

"Well… let's just say I don't think she's going to be joining you anytime soon, otherwise. It appears to me that Valentina has a very strong work ethic, to the extent that I might even describe her as a workaholic." Bianchi then stood and gestured for Giancarlo to do the same. "Let me show you."

It required the men roughly a minute to walk the way back around to the observation room where Ferro remained seated at her computer. She diverted her attention from the monitor to give him a curt nod.

"Valentina still hasn't put her clothes on, just so you know." She swiveled her chair around to deliver to Giancarlo a very unimpressed visage. "Though, I recommend not being too flustered at seeing her nude in the future. You're her handler, after all, and this is the job you signed up for if I'm not mistaken."

"But—"

Ferro's displeasure, manifested plainly within her stern voice, prompted his silence. "That's completely irrelevant, whatever it is you're about to say. You know that just as much as any of us here." She then pointed an extended thumb toward the glass. "Anyway, it might help you to take a look."

Knowing he had no other real option, Giancarlo sighed before mentally steeling himself to handle whatever scenes of nakedness awaited him in that room. Sure enough, Valentina had not even touched the bag containing her clothing. Instead, she sat perched on her bed, steadily typing away on the laptop. At least, given the angle, he could only see her upper half, which he considered a blessing. His gaze didn't linger, however. He turned back toward Bianchi and Ferro.

"Why hasn't she gotten dressed yet?" His was a very perplexed tone.

"You asked her to join you outside once she got dressed," Bianchi said. "But you never gave her a timeframe for dressing. So, she's currently doing what she believes is more immediately useful to your efforts."

"In other words, you never actually gave her an order," Ferro added. "Understanding the value of orders, both for cyborgs and handlers, is vital for a successful _fratello_."

Giancarlo shrugged before reaching for the door handle. "I'll make sure she's dressed this time."

His third time in the room that day was a proverbial charm, but he still had to work for it. Valentina perked to attention upon noticing his presence, even though he still refused to look directly at her while she remained undressed.

"Giancarlo." Her words came rapidly and with blatant excitement. "I'm picking up a bunch of audio signals in the VHF part of the spectrum, some of which sound like… um… music, I think? But there are also some signals which are somewhat encrypted, which seems strange to me."

He muffled a cough before speaking in as earnest a voice as he could muster. "Valentina. I need you to put your clothes on, now."

"But, I did manage to find some interesting aspects of these encrypted signals—well, probably more scrambled than properly encrypted." She peeked up from her monitor and immediately sported a worried expression. "The waveforms are very distorted due to an unusually high amount of background noise, but… um, Giancarlo? Aren't you going to look?"

"Not until you put your clothes on, which I want you to do right now. Only then will I look at what you have to show me. I'll be outside."

Valentina acquiesced with a slow nod and set the laptop on the bed. While Giancarlo continued to avert his vision from the still-naked girl, the combination of hearing a familiar sound and her strange movements beyond merely hopping from the mattress piqued his curiosity, prompting him to steal a quick glance. He noticed a USB cable attached to the machine. He knew that much was not unusual. At the same time, he knew that Apple did not package USB cables along with their laptops. Nor did he add in one when he assembled her gift. For the sake of his curiosity, he only required another instant to figure out where she had obtained the cable.

Crimson returned to his features with full force. He made sure Valentina could not see him, mainly by marching toward the hallway exit door as rapidly as his legs could move him. Once he passed the threshold, he slumped into the same chair as before, lowered his head atop folded arms, and took several deep breaths.

" _Yeah… Seems I wasn't ready for that. Louis told me about that, and Belisario too, but…"_

Such uncomfortable warmth seemed to take forever to dissipate from his face and the rest of his body. In reality, however, only a minute had elapsed. It was just enough time for Valentina to walk through the door, her laptop held in one hand. This time he could look at her with ease, clothed as she was.

"How do you like it?"

"Um…" Valentina's face bore signs of confusion, and that feeling seeped into her voice. "What do you mean? It-it's very useful to me, the laptop you gave me. But I wish it would hurry up with analyzing this data. And, I still have some questions to ask you."

A tiny grin tugged at his lips. "I meant the dress you're wearing. How do you like it?"

She peered downward. The dress she wore comprised mainly of white satin patterned with pale images of roses. Crimson trimmed the bottom of the skirt, and a similarly colored sash and rose on her left shoulder completed the embellishments. A red pair of leather flats would have adorned her bare feet, but she left them behind in the bag.

"I… It's functional, I guess." She shrugged. "Itches a little."

"I think you look absolutely lovely in that. Truly beautiful."

Her suddenly dour expression contrasted his wide smile. "That's only because I was designed to look that way. Nothing more."

"Still, I really like how you look in that dress. You can thank Priscilla and her fashion sense. And, with Easter coming up soon, you'll have perfectly fitting attire for the holiday."

"So…"

Valentina paused for a few moments, perplexity twisting her features during that time. Then, almost as quickly, the confusion vaporized, replaced by determination. With one swift motion, she opened the laptop's lid and all but jammed the screen into Giancarlo's face.

"Are you free to look at this now, sir?"

That had done it for him. Despite recognizing her seriousness, he couldn't resist feeling great amusement upon witnessing her antics. That resulted in his bellowing laughter. At the same time, he slipped his arm around the girl's shoulders and pulled her into a loose hug.

"Certainly, Valentina. Though, let's just do so in your dorm room, shall we?"


End file.
